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Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine
The University of
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United States
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W E N DY LOW E R
Nazi Empire-Building and the
Holocaust in Ukraine
© 
The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum. The assertions, arguments, and conclusions contained
herein are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Portions of the text have been previously published: Wendy Lower, ‘‘A
New Ordering of Space and Race: Nazi Colonial Dreams in Zhytomyr,
Ukraine, –,’’ German Studies Review , no.  (): –;
used by permission of German Studies Review. Wendy Lower, ‘‘ ‘Anticipatory Obedience’ and the Nazi Implementation of the Holocaust in the
Ukraine: A Case Study of Central and Peripheral Forces in the
Generalbezirk Zhytomyr, –,’’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies ,
no.  (): –; used by permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lower, Wendy.
Nazi empire-building and the Holocaust in Ukraine / Wendy Lower.
p. cm.
‘‘Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum.’’
Includes bibliographical references and index.
 --- (alk. paper)
. Ukraine—ZìHytomyrs’ka oblast’—History—German occupation, –.
. Germany—Politics and government—–. . Holocaust, Jewish
(–)—Ukraine—ZìHytomyrs’ka oblast’. . World War, –—
Ukraine—ZìHytomyrs’ka oblast’. . Germany—Colonies—Ukraine—
ZìHytomyrs’ka oblast’—History—th century. I. Title.
.. 
.'—dc
    


For the mothers and daughters of the Czilug family:
Gitia Malik (born in Liubar, ), Rakhilia Stepanskii
(born in Liubar, ; killed at Babi Yar,  September ),
Liuba Stepanskii (born in Sarapul, ; killed at Babi Yar,
 September ), and Klavdia Malik (born in NovohradVolyns’kyi, )
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Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Glossary xv
Introduction 
 Nazi Colonialism and Ukraine 
 Military Conquest and Social Upheaval, July–August  
 The Wehrmacht Administration of Zhytomyr 
 Making Genocide Possible:
The Onset of the Holocaust, July–December  
 The Zhytomyr General Commissariat, – 
 The General Commissariat’s Machinery of Destruction:
The Holocaust in the Countryside and Jewish Forced Labor,
– 
 Himmler’s Hegewald Colony:
Nazi Resettlement Experiments and the Volksdeutsche 
 The Unraveling of Nazi Rule, – 
 Legacies of Nazi Rule 
Appendix:
German and Ukrainian Spellings of Place Names 
Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 
Illustrations and Maps

Himmler speaking with Felix Steiner 
Hitler visiting with German Red Cross nurses
in Berdychiv 
German Flyer: ‘‘Passes’’ for Red Army deserters 
German road signs in the center of Zhytomyr 
Soviet POWs in a Vinnytsia POW camp 
SD officers prepare to hang Moishe Kogan and
Wolf Kieper 
Rounded-up Jews at the hanging of Moishe Kogan
and Wolf Kieper 
Organizational chart of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine 
Organizational chart of a Gebietskommissariat in
Ukraine 
Kurt Klemm 
Ukrainian forced laborers examined by a Wehrmacht
doctor 
Ukrainian forced laborers say good-bye to loved ones 
Announcement forbidding the sheltering of Jews 
Work on the Main Road, by Arnold Daghani 
Back ‘‘Home’’ from Work, by Arnold Daghani 
Mass Graves, by Arnold Daghani 
German SS-policeman shooting a Jewish man in Vinnytsia 
Hitler with Wilhelm List and Hermann Göring 
Hitler’s office at Werwolf 
Himmler receiving birthday congratulations 
Himmler inspecting cotton fields in Ukraine 
Vinnitsa 
German soldiers during the reconquest of Zhytomyr 

Nazi-Dominated Europe in  and Plans for a
Greater Germanic Empire 
The Reich Commissariat Ukraine,  May  
Administrative Map of the General District of Zhytomyr 
Ethnic German Settlement Area, named ‘‘Hegewald’’
(preservation forest) 
The Collapse of the Nazi Empire:
The Forced Evacuation of Volksdeutsche from
Ukraine,  
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Acknowledgments
Little did I know when I started the research for this book that my interest in
Ukraine and Holocaust history would end up demanding so much time and
energy from family, friends, mentors, and colleagues in Ukraine, Germany, and
the United States. Many people who helped me trusted that I would do justice to the material that they generously shared with me. I am responsible for
any flaws in the book, but I cannot take full credit for its merits. During my
research trips to Zhytomyr, Ukraine, I stayed with the Starovoitov family, without whom I could not have completed this study. I am forever grateful to Klavdia (Malik) Starovoitov, my host ‘‘mother.’’ She introduced me to Zhytomyr’s
Holocaust survivor community; she helped me translate handwritten sources
in Russian and Ukrainian; and she opened up her home and dacha to me. She
and her son Felix negotiated on my behalf with the local archives; as a ‘‘Westerner’’ with admittedly little sense of how to ‘‘work the Soviet system’’ of blat
(personal favors, barter) and the like, I would have certainly been denied research opportunities without their involvement and know-how.
At the Zhytomyr State Archives, Tat’iana Nikolaevna Franz and Hrihorii
Denisenko answered my many inquiries about the holdings, brought new material to my attention, and helped arrange interviews with former partisans
and forced laborers. Mary Poltorak, Aleksei Pavlov, and Sergei Gonzar assisted
me with additional translations and served as interpreters. Zhytomyr scholars
Efim Melamed and the late professor Boris Kruglak shared their invaluable insight into the region’s history. Kira Burova at the local Office of Jewish Affairs
and Emigration provided me with recorded interviews of Holocaust survivors
and invited me to conduct additional interviews with her. I am also grateful
to Zhytomyr’s veterans association led by Ivan Shinal’skii. The newly revived
synagogue in Zhytomyr opened its doors to me as well, allowing me to view its
newspaper collections and use its copy machine.
In Germany, reference staff at the Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen (Ludwigsburg) provided me with very useful materials. I am especially
grateful to Dr. Dieter Pohl at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich who helped me a great deal by commenting on my manuscript. Dr. Karel
Berkhoff at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in the Netherlands
also offered a constructive critique.
In the United States, thanks go to my Ukrainian language instructors, Natalie Shostak and Natalie Gawdiak (at the Library of Congress). At the National
Archives, archivist and historian Timothy Mulligan saved me countless hours
of research by guiding me through the labyrinth of captured German records.
Just as I was preparing to return to the Zhytomyr archives for a second time
in the spring of , the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened.
Thanks to the museum’s specialist on former Soviet archival collections, Carl
Modig, I learned of additional files in Zhytomyr. In the museum’s Center for
Advanced Holocaust Studies, fellows and scholars including Hans Mommsen,
Susannah Heschel, Berel Lang, Aron Rodrigue, Götz Aly, Peter Longerich, Gerhard Weinberg, Jean Ancel, Dennis Deletant, Konrad Kwiet, Rebecca Boehling,
Henry Friedlander, Hans Safrian, Christian Gerlach, Rebecca Golbert, Viorel
Achim, Kate Brown, Alexander Prusin, Katrin Reichelt, Misha Tyaglyy, Tim
Cole, David Furber, Dirk Moses, Robert Bernheim, and especially the center’s
staff historians Peter Black, Jürgen Matthäus, Geoff Megargee, Martin Dean,
Vadim Altskan, Radu Iaonid, and Michael Gelb engaged me in scholarly discussions of my research and gave me pertinent materials. Alexander Rossino
and Peter Black reviewed all or parts of the book manuscript. Museum staff
in the archives and library, including Henry Mayer, Mark Ziomek, Michlean
Amir, Anatol Steck, Aleksandra Borecka, Bill Connelly, Steve Kanaley, Sharon
Muller, and Sara Sirman guided my use of the collections. The director of the
Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Paul Shapiro, supported this work as
a valued mentor and tireless advocate of Holocaust scholarship. Thanks also
to my CAHS colleagues Robert Ehrenreich, Tracy Brown, and Lisa Zaid for sustaining me with their savvy computer skills and good humor. This work also
benefited from continued exchange with former  Summer Research Workshop participants Ray Brandon and Edward Westermann. On countless occasions I turned to the center’s director of publications, Benton Arnovitz, for his
counsel. I have enjoyed and appreciated working with the center’s editorial coordinator, Dr. Aleisa Fishman, who conscientiously carried my work through
the center’s review process. Thanks to the distinguished scholars of the Publications Subcommittee for taking valuable time away from their full schedules
to read and comment on this work. The transformation of this work from a
dissertation to a book could not have been accomplished without the commitment and hard work of many people at the University of North Carolina Press,
above all Senior Editor Chuck Grench, Editor Paul Betz, and Assistant Editor
Amanda McMillan. I am especially grateful to Doris Bergen at the University
of Notre Dame and Tim Snyder at Yale University, who devoted many hours to
xii
Acknowledgments
critiquing the manuscript. Dr. Vladimir Melamed helped with the Ukrainian
transliterations.
For my research and writing, I received fellowships and grants from American University, the German Historical Institute, and the Center for Advanced
Holocaust Studies. The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute also contributed
funding toward my Ukrainian language studies. My dissertation committee
members—Richard Breitman, James Malloy, and Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak—nurtured this work in its infancy. Richard Breitman, the committee
chair, read through several drafts of each chapter, shared many documents with
me, and commented on every aspect of this work with the utmost care and erudition. For the past fourteen years, he has inspired me as a model researcher,
teacher, and mentor. I cannot thank him enough.
Last, but certainly not least, I owe my biggest thanks to my family. My parents instilled in me an appreciation of history. Their boundless generosity and
optimism sustained me throughout. My husband and fellow scholar, Christof
Mauch, has been a constant source of inspiration, wisdom, and comfort. Regrettably these past years I gave up valuable time with our young sons, Ian and
Alexander, to complete this book, whose subject matter remains a mystery to
them. My hope is that someday they too will develop an appreciation of history,
and perhaps an understanding of the tragic events in the pages that follow.
Acknowledgments
xiii
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Glossary
Many of the abbreviations given here are used in the notes, although some appear in
the text as well. Abbreviations for archival sources appear at the start of the notes.
AOK: Armeeoberkommando, German Army Field Command/Headquarters.
BdS: Befehlshaber der Sipo-SD, commander of the Sipo-SD.
DG: Durchgangsstrasse, highway or autobahn.
DVL: Deutsche Volksliste, German People’s List. The Nazi registration and
classification system for ethnic Germans that divided them into one of
four categories based on their Aryan characteristics and willingness to be
Germanized.
EG: Einsatzgruppe, ‘‘Task Force.’’ Einsatzgruppen were special mobile
killing units composed mainly of Security Police (Sipo) and Security
Service (SD) personnel that were assigned to Poland and the Soviet Union
to apprehend and execute so-called racial and political enemies of the
Reich, primarily Jews. They arrived just behind or sometimes with the
advancing Wehrmacht troops.
General Government: Nazi-occupied Poland, consisting of five districts:
Cracow, Warsaw, Radom, Lublin, and eastern Galicia.
GFP: Geheime Feldpolizei, Army Secret Field Police. Wehrmacht security
units attached to the Abwehr. In  they were taken over by the SD.
HSSPF: Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer, higher SS and police leader.
Established in , this office was the highest regional authority
overseeing the actions of all SS and police forces in a given district
(Wehrkreis) in the Reich. The office was later established in the occupied
territories of Poland, the Czech lands, Norway, the Netherlands, and the
Soviet Union. The higher SS and police leaders reported directly to
Reichsführer SS and Police Heinrich Himmler and were regarded as ‘‘Little
Himmlers’’ in the field. During Operation Barbarossa, three higher SS
and police leaders (Russia North, Central, and South) planned and
implemented the mass shootings of Jews in collaboration with the
most senior officials in the field—Wehrmacht field commanders,
Einsatzgruppen leaders, Waffen-SS commanders, and Order Police chiefs.
For Ukraine, Himmler appointed Friedrich Jeckeln and his successor
Hans-Adolf Prützmann to the position of HSSPF Russia South.
NKVD: Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, People’s Commissariat for
Interior Affairs. The Soviet political police established in , successor
to the GPU and predecessor to the MGB and KGB.
NSV: Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, National Socialist People’s
Welfare Agency. An organization established by Hitler to coordinate Nazi
Party relief and charity work for Party members and their families,
especially for mothers and children. The organization was also active in
welfare programs for ethnic Germans in the East.
Oblast: A Russian term for an administrative district or province within the
Soviet Union, in size bigger than a county but not as large as a state.
OKH: Oberkommando des Heeres, Army High Command.
OKW: Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Armed Forces High Command.
Orpo: Ordnungspolizei, Order Police. Consisted of regular uniformed police
and rural gendarmes.
OT: Organisation Todt, Organization Todt. A semi-military organization
responsible for military construction projects, such as installations and
fortifications, as well as the autobahn. Its leader, Fritz Todt, also served as
Reich minister for armaments and munitions.
OUN: Orhanizatsiia Ukrains’kykh Natsionalistiv, Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists. The leading interwar and wartime Ukrainian nationalist
(mostly émigré) movement that split into two factions, one under Andrii
Mel’nyk (OUN-M) and the other under Stepan Bandera (OUN-B).
RKFDV: Reichskommissariat für die Festigung des Deutschen Volkstums,
Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom. This Himmler
agency led the Germanization and resettlement programs for ethnic
Germans in the East.
RKU: Reichskommissariat Ukraine, Reich Commissariat Ukraine. The Nazioccupied civilian administration for Ukraine (excluding eastern Galicia,
which was attached to the General Government, Nazi-occupied Poland).
The Commissariat Ukraine was joined with the Reich Commissariat
Ostland (Belorussia and the Baltic States) under the Reich Ministry for the
Eastern Occupied Territories. The Commissariat Ukraine was headed by
Erich Koch, and its capital was Rivne.
RMfdbO: Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete, Reich Ministry
for the Occupied Eastern Territories. The Nazi government agency for
administering the civilian occupied zones of the East, which were divided
into commissariats. It was led by Alfred Rosenberg.
xvi Glossary
RSD: Reich Sicherheitsdienst, Reich Security Service. This elite force
developed from a special protection service for the Führer, known as the
Führerschutzkommando. Personally selected by Himmler and Hitler,
officers of the RSD were charged with securing and guarding the Führer’s
field headquarters and also served as Hitler’s bodyguards.
RSHA: Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Reich Security Main Office. Created in
September , the RSHA combined in one agency the German state’s
political and criminal police detective forces (Gestapo, Kriminalpolizei)
and the Nazi Party’s Security Service (SD), the top political intelligence
service of the Reich. Among its key functions were managing and
coordinating the murder of the European Jews as well as other perceived
enemies of the Reich, monitoring millions of foreign forced laborers, and
conducting domestic and foreign intelligence operations. In addition to
the central office in Berlin, led by Reinhard Heydrich (and his successor
Ernst Kaltenbrunner), the RSHA had regional offices and mobile units
called Einsatzgruppen.
RuSHA: Rasse und Siedlungs-Hauptamt, Race and Settlement Office.
Established in  as the central SS office tasked with establishing Nazi
‘‘standards’’ for determining membership in the German ‘‘race’’ and
membership in the SS, as well as evaluating prospective brides of SS men.
During the war, its jurisdiction expanded to include assessments of the
‘‘Germanizability’’ of ethnic Germans and non-Germans, assessments
that affected decisions on resettlement expropriation and were often
matters of life and death. RuSHA’s staff of ‘‘race experts’’ helped plan the
expulsion of non-Germans from the eastern territories and facilitated the
resettlement of ethnic Germans in occupied Europe.
SD: Sicherheitsdienst, Security Service. The intelligence service of the SS.
The SD was created in  with the main task of exposing and observing
enemies of the Nazi Party. Its powers expanded in the Third Reich to
intelligence-gathering and counter-intelligence operations against state
enemies. Under Reinhard Heydrich’s command, SD personnel managed
the planning and implementation of the ‘‘Final Solution,’’ in particular,
as members of the Einsatzgruppen and in Adolf Eichmann’s SD office of
Jewish Affairs.
Sipo: Sicherheitspolizei, Security Police. A Nazi government agency that
joined criminal and secret police forces (the Kripo and the Gestapo).
It was combined with SS agencies in the Reich Security Main Office.
SK: Sonderkommando, Special Detachment. A subunit of an Einsatzgruppe
sent out to find and kill ‘‘enemies’’ of the Reich in the newly conquered
Glossary
xvii
areas of the East. The unit was generally composed of no more than 
men from the SS and the police; often the squadrons were divided into
smaller reconnaissance units, or Vorkommandos, that advanced into the
conquered areas with the military’s armored divisions.
SS: Schutzstaffel, ‘‘Protection Squadron.’’ Originally formed in  to serve
as Adolf Hitler’s bodyguards, this elite police unit was taken over by
Heinrich Himmler, who expanded it into an enormous organization of
secret police, concentration camp personnel, and paramilitary units.
SSPF: SS- und Polizeiführer, SS and police leader. A title for regional
commanders of the SS and police. The SSPF in Zhytomyr reported to the
higher SS and police leader for Ukraine who was directly subordinate to
Himmler. As chief of Security Police and SD for his region, the SSPF was
responsible for maintaining security, an activity that involved the
investigation and eradication of real and perceived political, criminal, and
racial threats to German rule. The combined SS and police functions in
this position reflected at the regional level the merger of the SS (a Nazi
Party organization) and the police (an agency of the German state) under
Himmler’s direct command.
UPA: Ukraïns’ka Povstan’s’ka Armiia, Ukrainian Insurgent Army. This
term first appeared in February–March , describing the Ukrainian
partisans in Polissia and Volhynia. It was the combined military force of
Ukrainian nationalists formed to liberate Ukrainians from both the Nazis
and the Soviets.
VoMi: Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, Ethnic German Liaison Office. This
s agency for the welfare and repatriation of ethnic (non-Reich)
Germans was absorbed by the SS when Himmler was appointed Reich
commissioner for the strengthening of Germandom (). Its chief
was SS Lieutenant General Werner Lorenz.
xviii Glossary
Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine
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Introduction
People arriving from Kiev say that the Germans have placed a
cordon of troops around the huge grave in Babi Yar where the
bodies of 50,000 Jews slaughtered in Kiev at the end of September 1941 are buried. They are feverishly digging up corpses and
burning them. Are they so mad as to hope thus to hide their
evil traces that have been branded forever by the tears and the
blood of Ukraine, branded so that it will burn brightly on the
darkest night?
—Vasilii Grossman, Red Star, October 1943
With moral outrage, Soviet wartime correspondent Vasilii
Grossman scorned the Germans’ hasty attempt to destroy the physical evidence
of their horrific crimes. The atrocities were too enormous to be concealed and,
for this Jewish writer, too personally searing to be forgotten. Grossman (who
lost his own mother to the Holocaust in Berdychiv, Ukraine) struggled to document and publicize the distinct history of the Jews during World War II, despite
Soviet censorship and banning of his work. Drawing from newly available archival collections from the former Soviet Union and the pioneering work of
Grossman as well as Holocaust scholars Shmuel Spector, Philip Friedman, and
Raul Hilberg, this book examines the history of the Shoah in Ukraine within
the context of Nazi occupation aims and practices in the East, and specifically
the devastation that occurred in the Zhytomyr region, where Grossman came
of age. The study seeks to deepen our understanding of how individuals empowered by government and private agencies come to accept and then perpetrate campaigns of destruction and mass murder, and often do so in the name
of progress.
During World War II, the most powerful military forces ever amassed
clashed over Ukrainian territory while Nazi occupiers initiated their criminal
schemes against the population. Nearly . million civilians in Ukraine died
under Nazi rule. The Germans and their collaborators murdered at least . million Jews. Of the . million laborers forcibly deported from the former Soviet
territories to Hitler’s Germany, an estimated . million were from Ukraine.
More than  cities and towns and about , villages were completely or
partially destroyed.1 The figures alone, however, do not describe, let alone ex-
plain, the significance of this horrendous history. Ukraine suffered destruction
to an extent that other regions of Nazi-occupied Europe did not, and all of this
devastation came in the wake of the worst years of Stalinism. In Ukraine’s history of man-made disasters, mostly imposed from the outside, the Nazi occupation stands out as the worst episode.
Until recently, Ukraine (which gained its independence in ) was a territory inhabited by generations of Russian rulers, Polish landlords, ethnic
German settlers, Jewish traders, and Ukrainian peasants, who comprised the
overwhelming majority within its porous borders. For centuries the Great
Powers of Europe viewed Ukraine as the continent’s ‘‘breadbasket,’’ valued
for its natural resources more than its diverse population of Ukrainians, Jews,
Russians, Poles, Belorussians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Crimean
Tatars, Roma, and ethnic Germans. The perception that this ‘‘space’’ and its
people could be exploited and radically transformed was most extreme in the
s and s when Soviet and then Nazi empire-builders unleashed their
utopian schemes in Ukraine. In about two decades, the area was transformed,
as historian Kathryn Brown aptly described it, from an ‘‘ethnic borderland to
a Soviet heartland.’’ 2
This study sheds light on how the Nazis conceptualized, conquered, and
governed Ukraine in a manner that was historically familiar, as well as distinctive and even unprecedented. It explores new questions about the ideological roots and manifestations of Nazi colonialist thinking toward Ukraine, the
interaction of the center and periphery in Hitler’s Europe, the implementation
and interrelation of Nazi policies toward Jews, ethnic Germans and Ukrainians, and the impact of Nazi rule on Zhytomyr, a central region in Ukraine. It
elucidates how Nazi-style militarism, colonialism, and genocidal population
policies came together in one particular place and how the indigenous population there coped and, in inconceivably large numbers, tragically died under
German rule.
With its fertile plains and northern valleys safely nestled west of the Dnepr,
the Zhytomyr region was envisioned by Nazi leaders as a future Aryan stronghold consisting of German agricultural colonies, SS-estates, and defense fortifications.3 In mapping this space, Nazi empire-builders pieced together the
former Soviet administrative districts (oblasts) of Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr,
western sections of Kiev Oblast, and a northern patch of marshland from
Belorussia to create the Zhytomyr General District. The district (Bezirk) was
, square miles (roughly the area of the combined U.S. states of Connecticut, Vermont, and Massachusetts) with close to  million inhabitants,
therefore sparsely populated in most parts. On German administrative maps it
 Introduction
looked indistinguishable from the other five regional districts that comprised
the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (RKU). Yet during the war it became the hub of
elite activity in Ukraine and a laboratory for Reichsführer of the SS and Police
Heinrich Himmler’s resettlement activists. Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, and
Himmler all placed their elaborate headquarters and retreats around Vinnytsia
and Zhytomyr. Here both pillars of Hitler’s racist, revolutionary ideology—the
elimination of the Jews and German colonization of the East—transformed the
landscape and devastated the population to an extent that was not experienced
in other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe besides Poland.
Often scholars have quoted Hitler’s musings about Ukraine’s being a German ‘‘India’’ as evidence of his delusions of grandeur. However, little has been
written about how Europe’s history of imperialism, and Germany’s history of
migration to Eastern Europe and völkisch utopian fantasies, shaped the policies and behavior of Nazi leaders and their functionaries who tried to colonize Ukraine during World War II.4 The Third Reich’s population planners,
technocrats, Nazi Party ‘‘missionaries,’’ and other white-collar professionals
who furthered Reichsführer Himmler’s resettlement schemes placed themselves within a longer tradition of a Germanic ‘‘drive to the East.’’ 5 As Hitler
asserted in Mein Kampf: ‘‘We National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath
the foreign policy of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six
hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and
west, and turn our gaze to the east. At long last we break off the colonial, commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.’’ 6
Hitler’s ‘‘soil policy of the future’’ derived from various strands of thought that
had become especially popular as of the late nineteenth century and gained
wider currency among the frustrated, right-wing German nationalists who felt
cheated by their World War I defeat and the ‘‘humiliating’’ Versailles Treaty.
Determined to give Germany its ‘‘natural’’ place on the world stage as an empire, German geopolitical theorists, Nazi ideologues, and Hitler’s officials governing Ukraine promoted their expansionist aims relative to other European
models of imperialism, often comparing themselves to the pioneers of North
America or to the high-brow British overseers in India. They likened the indigenous peoples of Eastern Europe to the ‘‘inferior’’ and ‘‘disappearing races’’
of Indians, ‘‘Negroes,’’ and Africans. In addition to distributing colonial literature to regional functionaries in Ukraine and Poland, Nazi leaders encouraged subordinates to fashion themselves literally as imperial rulers. They were
obsessed with enforcing the proper Nazi salute and militaristic dress codes,
down to every insignia and medal. Like the Nazi flag that was dutifully raised
each day by functionaries in the most remote outposts, the salute and uniform
Introduction

Nazi-Dominated Europe in  and Plans for a Greater Germanic Empire
The Reich Commissariat Ukraine,  May . The five general districts of the Commissariat
shown on the map are the General District Volhynia, General District Zhytomyr, General District
Kiev, General District Nikolaev, and General District Dnipropetrovs’k. To the east of the
commissariat is the much larger area occupied by the military. The map was issued by the
Reichsführer SS and Chief of Police, Department S II B. Source: Central State Archive, Minsk,
courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, RG .M, reel , --.
were assertions of German power and ‘‘Aryan’’ solidarity.7 The caste of Nazi
adventurers who ran Ukraine from  to —most of them were SA ‘‘old
fighters’’ who had grown up with the Party in the s—perceived their actions as legitimately linked to Europe’s history of conquest and rule; they also
prided themselves on being revolutionaries with a new, utopian vision of an
Aryan-dominated Europe.
Ultimately, the exigencies of the war effort and mounting partisan warfare
behind the lines prevented Nazi leaders from fully developing and realizing
their colonial aims in Ukraine. The experiments that the Nazis were able to test
out around their Zhytomyr headquarters failed. Aside from demonstrating the
sad fact that it is easier to destroy than create, especially in the context of a
major war, the inability of German leaders to realize their colonial aspirations
sheds light on the history of Nazi policy-making and implementation as it occurred at the periphery of Hitler’s empire, which is another theme of this study.
The essence of Reich policies in Ukraine originated with Hitler’s prophecies
and offhand remarks that were then realized by his subordinates, an ensemble
 Introduction
Administrative Map of the General District of Zhytomyr. Source: Zhytomyr State Archive,
P--.
of ignoble characters who vied for ever-increasing power. Often Martin Bormann (chief of the Nazi Party bureaucracy), Heinrich Himmler (chief of the SSpolice), Alfred Rosenberg (head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern
Territories), and Erich Koch (Reich commissar for Ukraine) would, fresh from
a visit with the Führer in his Ukrainian headquarters at Vinnytsia, formulate a
policy based on Hitler’s casual, sinister observations of the local people.8 This
style of ‘‘on the spot’’ decision-making characterized the political culture of
Nazism; it was secretive, corrupt, and valued action.
Speaking from his Hegewald compound near Zhytomyr, Himmler urged
his subordinates to ‘‘make decisions in the field!’’ Then he described his own
‘‘model’’ approach to the attentive SS-policemen at the conference: ‘‘I do not
make decisions in Berlin, rather I drive to Lublin, Lemberg, Reval, etc., and
at these places in the evening, then, eight, ten, twelve major decisions are
made on the spot.’’ 9 In fact, only two months earlier when he arrived at his
Hegewald field headquarters, Himmler rushed to Hitler’s Werwolf compound
nearby. They lunched there on  July , and discussed among other things
plans for ethnic Germans, the Waffen-SS, and antipartisan warfare. Later that
evening and during the day that followed, Himmler held a series of meetings
with Ukraine’s SS-police commanders at his Zhytomyr headquarters. He told
his men that the earlier order to kill all the Jews must be carried out immediately and entirely. According to the postwar testimony of one SS-policeman
who was present, Himmler demanded that they ‘‘clean the territory of Ukraine
for the future settlement of Germans.’’ In addition to the immediate destruction of all Jewish communities, Himmler insisted that the Ukrainian civilian
population be brought to a ‘‘minimum.’’ Four months later all of Ukraine’s
shtetls and ghettos lay in ruins; tens of thousands of Jewish men, women, and
children were brutally murdered by stationary and mobile SS-police units and
indigenous auxiliaries. Meanwhile, Ukrainians in Kiev were reliving the nightmare of an artificial famine—this time at the hands of the Nazis, who blocked
food shipments to the city in an effort to deurbanize Ukraine by depopulating
the cities of non-Germans.10
In the Nazi system, major policy decisions were often made ‘‘on the spot’’
or in the field, as Himmler revealed to his men. This style of policy-making
and decision-making has puzzled historians of the Third Reich, who have tried
to piece together the inner workings of the state and party system with sparse
documentation about the origins of new policies or shifts in policies, but ample
source material about the bureaucratic machinery of the Reich. Nazi rule in
Ukraine was a combination of this rather arbitrary form of Hitler-centered goal
setting and the dynamic, frequently contradictory actions of his subordinates

Introduction
Reichsführer SS and Police Heinrich Himmler (left) speaking with Felix Steiner,
commander of Waffen-SS Armoured Division Viking, Ukraine 
(U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of James Blevins, #)
who ‘‘worked toward the Führer,’’ pursued their own self-interests, and held
mixed views about the future of the Reich.11 Regional leaders adapted the most
radical policies to local conditions, demonstrating an uneven, albeit powerful
combination of zealous initiative, sycophantic obedience, and uneasy compliance. Yet there was order in this chaos. In the case of policies with clear aims
and strong support, the Nazi system functioned very systematically and thoroughly. The history of the Holocaust offers the most glaring example of how
a National Socialist consensus developed on certain issues that overrode personal, professional, and political rivalries.
Nazi leaders relished their mobility because it allowed them to participate
in the historic events that they set in motion. Hitler, Göring, and Himmler
commissioned planes and elaborate trains so that they could see firsthand how
their goals and visions were taking shape in the field. The chief of the Reich’s
Secret Police and Security Service, Reinhard Heydrich, who wanted to show
off his toughness, patriotism, and prowess, flew with the Luftwaffe during the
first six weeks of Operation Barbarossa. After his plane was shot down near
Zhytomyr, he was rescued by some of his men who were active in a mobile killing unit, an Einsatzgruppe. According to the postwar testimony of an EinsatzIntroduction

gruppe member, Heydrich met with his mobile killing units at this time, and
thereafter in early August  the units began killing Jewish women and children in massive numbers.12 The elite’s trains, airstrips, and secret headquarters marked the landscape of Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. The
direct influence of these leaders on the periphery of the Third Reich has not
been fully explored by historians, and the Zhytomyr region’s wartime history
offers a powerful demonstration of the center’s impact on local events.
This regional case study, however, is not strictly about the dynamics of German policy implementation in Zhytomyr. The region’s population suffered tremendously at the hands of the Nazis, and the fate of some groups and the actions of others illuminate significant aspects of Ukraine’s history. When the
Germans arrived in the region in , they confronted a population that was
much more politically demoralized and economically destitute than they had
expected. Ukrainians who were still haunted by the terror of s Stalinism did
not uniformly embrace the Nazis as ‘‘liberators.’’ While all Ukrainians viewed
Germans as outsiders or foreigners, as individuals they experienced the occupation differently depending on where they lived, the character of the local German rulers, the type of work they obtained, whether they were male or female,
old or young, and whether they could speak or read German. Historian Karel
Berkhoff ’s exceptional study of daily life in Ukraine, Harvest of Despair, has deepened understanding of these varied responses and experiences. By defining the
colonial setting of Nazi rule, my study of Zhytomyr builds on Berkhoff ’s social
history because it provides an ideological framework for understanding German aims and behavior in Ukraine. It also focuses on the history of the Shoah,
which was in its scope and methods the most extreme genocidal policy of the
Reich and indeed the defining feature of Nazi empire-building.
I chose to organize the book chronologically and thematically
into nine chapters. The first chapter explores the ideological roots of Nazi colonialist thinking in Ukraine. Besides the historical German fascination with the
East, in what ways did Europe’s history of imperialism and colonialism influence Hitler’s projections of Ukraine and Nazi policy aims there? The second
chapter examines the military invasion and occupation of the Zhytomyr region.
It introduces the first of two governing systems that ravaged the region—the
German army’s occupation administration of Kommandanturen and mobile SSpolice units; and the subsequent civilian administration of Kommissare and stationary gendarme and SS units. The third chapter investigates how the Wehrmacht ruled over Zhytomyr between mid-July  and November . In this
initial stage of the occupation, Ukrainians and ethnic Germans willingly served
 Introduction
the Germans as mayors, district leaders, village elders, and auxiliary policemen. Did these collaborators wield any power, or were they simply German
puppets? What were their relations with German officials and, moreover, with
their neighbors? What were the Wehrmacht’s main policies for governing the
newly conquered areas as compared to the subsequent policies of the civilian
government?
The fourth chapter is the first of two on the Holocaust. In Zhytomyr, Germans and non-Germans from all walks of life participated in the murder of the
entire population of Jewish men, women, and children, as many as , persons. Most regional leaders fully exploited anti-Jewish measures to meet local
needs, their superiors’ expectations, and their own self-interests. While many
left their individual mark on the persecutory apparatus, the killing campaigns
down to the most remote villages were not totally disconnected from a central
chain of command.
The fifth chapter—on the Zhytomyr Commissariat—explores how the Germans tried to establish their colonial-style occupation system and pursued conflicting, ad hoc Ukrainian policies. Regional Nazi administrators in Ukraine,
known as general and district commissars, functioned within the hierarchy
of Alfred Rosenberg’s Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. On
paper they were the leading civil authority; however, in reality they had to share
power with Himmler’s SS and police forces. To what extent did the commissars
control Nazi policies at the local level? What were the interrelations among the
different German and non-German agencies present in the region?
In chapter seven, the study moves chronologically into a more focused look
at the fall of , when Hitler and Himmler created the Volksdeutsche settlement
called Hegewald. This first experimental colony contained roughly , of
the region’s Volhynian Germans who were concentrated into protected farming communities. Although German leaders celebrated the inaugural colony,
most of their subordinates doubted the success of such initiatives. What do
conflicts over the Volksdeutsche programs reveal about the lower-level commitment to Hitler’s utopian vision of a German Lebensraum in Ukraine?
The last chapter analyzes the unraveling of Nazi rule from late fall  until
early . It traces the impact of the partisan movement on the local population and German administration. In Zhytomyr there were at least four underground movements with varying political agendas. Although seemingly at odds
with one another, Ukrainian resistance and Ukrainian collaboration actually
overlapped. Many resistance fighters worked undercover in the administration.
Moreover, Ukrainian police collaborators and administrators who were central
agents of the Nazi terror and Holocaust in – later deserted their posts
Introduction

and joined the partisans in –. In other words, many Ukrainians and ethnic Germans changed sides during the war, often blurring the categorical distinctions of victim, perpetrator, and bystander.
Ukraine on the Eve of the Nazi Occupation, 1939–1941
In the interwar era and especially in the years leading up to the Nazi conquest of Ukraine, the territory’s borders were redrawn at least three times, and
Ukrainians found themselves divided among Soviet, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, and German rulers. By , the vast majority (over  million or  percent) resided within the borders of the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, while  million more lived in Polish-held Galicia and Volhynia. Ukrainians also fell under
Romanian rule in Bukovina and Bessarabia, and after March  Hungary governed the Ukrainian majority in the newly annexed Subcarpathian Rus’. Then
Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
pact, sparking the outbreak of World War II in September . Over  million Ukrainians who had been living in interwar Poland were suddenly swept
up in Stalin’s sovietization of eastern Galicia, western Volhynia, and western
Polissia, the hallmark of which was the rapid collectivization of agriculture. In
addition, Stalin’s secret police (NKVD) initiated mass arrests and deportations
of the leading noncommunist Ukrainians and nearly the entire Polish upper
classes and intelligentsia. They were crammed into freight cars and shipped
to central Asia and Siberia. According to historian Timothy Snyder’s work on
Volhynia, Soviet occupiers and their local collaborators deported as many as
, or  percent of the entire Polish population between  and .13
Meanwhile, over , Ukrainians (including the émigré nationalists who
fled the Soviets) remained in Cracow and other formerly Polish territory seized
by the Germans in . Consistent with the Nazi divide-and-rule strategy, the
Germans granted this Ukrainian minority leading positions in the occupation
administration of Poland. Ukrainian nationalist leaders and the Nazis had a few
things in common. They both wished to see the demise of Poland and Soviet
Russia. They both assumed that the Jewish minority in Eastern Europe would be
rendered powerless in the New Order. Anti-Semitism was a significant force in
both movements, but it was more central to the Nazi Weltanschauung. In this
era when ethnic cleansing did not have a bad name, Ukrainian leaders sought
an independent Ukraine for Ukrainians only, not a multiethnic society with its
perceived political instability, ‘‘racial’’ impurity, and vulnerable borders. They
mistakenly assumed that Ukrainian autonomy would be acceptable to Hitler,
who had much larger ambitions of European (and later global) domination,

Introduction
and certainly little sympathy for the plight of Ukrainians, who were in his mind
inferior Slavs.
Within two years of Poland’s defeat, France and the other continental powers of Europe were at Hitler’s knees, and he turned his attention to his main
enemy, the Soviet Union. On  June  Hitler and his allies launched Operation Barbarossa and quickly conquered most of Ukraine west of the Dnepr.
Ukrainian nationalist leaders and their supporters ended up in concentration camps or in the mass graves that were fast becoming a major feature of
Ukraine’s landscape. As Hitler described it to his coterie on  July , the
ultimate aim of this Vernichtungskrieg (war of destruction) against the Soviet
Union was to make a ‘‘Garden of Eden’’ out of the newly won territories in the
East. One of the areas being eyed by Nazi leaders as a future Aryan paradise
was Right Bank Ukraine around Zhytomyr.
The Zhytomyr Region and Its People
‘‘Zhytomyr,’’ a compound word meaning ‘‘rye-peace’’ or ‘‘wheat-universe,’’
is a little-known place on the map of Eastern Europe. For centuries the population of this region, situated about ninety miles west of Kiev, subsisted on crops
grown on the fertile black soil of Ukraine’s southern forest steppe that begins
below the Teterev River (a tributary of the Dnepr) and extends southward to
the Podolian town of Vinnytsia. In the s it was the sugar beet capital and
major agricultural center of the Soviet Union, with , acres of sugar beet
crops and over  million acres of wheat. Other than some local crafts and trade,
the region’s industries were tied to local farming and animal husbandry: for
example, textile mills, sugar refineries, distilleries, slaughterhouses, and tanneries.14
While most of the Zhytomyr region, as it was defined by German occupiers,
lay in the Volyn-Podolia upland, the northern border with Belorussia was historically part of the Polish kresy also known as Polissia. This borderland territory, which was heavily populated by Poles in districts such as Markhlevsk
(Dovbysh) as well as by Belorussians, was one of the poorest ‘‘backwaters’’ of
Europe. Its swamps, the Pripiat’ marshes, and dense forests were not appealing to farmers and traders but inviting to outlaws and persecuted groups, who
sought refuge there.15
Before and after World War II, Ukrainians made up the majority of the population of the Zhytomyr region. They dominated the countryside and formed
most of the peasantry. In the s, however, many Ukrainians moved to the
region’s centers at Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Berdychiv, and Ovruch. Zhytomyr was
Introduction

the largest of these with , inhabitants in . Vinnytsia, also an oblast
capital, contained , inhabitants, and Berdychiv had , dwellers,
more than one-third of whom were Jewish. Initially the younger male peasants migrated to these centers to work in new positions and learn new trades
within the Soviet system. Entire villages disappeared. By  Ukrainians constituted  percent of the urban population in Zhytomyr and this growth represented a threefold increase in the number of Ukrainians in cities since .
They entered the professions of teaching, bookkeeping, carpentry, printing,
and mechanics, and they took up half of the positions in the state and Communist Party offices. Stalin’s attempt to rapidly industrialize Ukraine’s agricultural economy forced more peasants out of the countryside; thousands were
deported and many more died during Stalin’s collectivization drive. During the
Great Famine of –, the Zhytomyr and Vinnytsia oblasts lost about  to
 percent of their peasant population to starvation-related illnesses. Despite
the seemingly urban features of the New Soviet Men (and women), Ukrainians
in Zhytomyr’s larger towns were only one generation away from the farm and
rural traditions.16 And despite intense Soviet repression of religious institutions, many Ukrainians, especially those in the countryside, secretly observed
their Christian Orthodox beliefs.
Among the region’s population of minorities, the Russians composed the
political elite for two centuries, a status that was challenged briefly during
the collapse of the tsarist empire and Bolshevik revolution.17 In – the
embattled Ukrainian movement for independence under Symon Petliura was
forced to move the seat of its government (the Directory) to various towns in
Right Bank Ukraine including Zhytomyr and Vinnytsia. While the fledgling Directory tried to establish Jewish national autonomy within Ukraine, the political and economic upheaval of the time let loose armed militias, government troops, and anti-Semitic hooligans who attacked and killed thousands
of Jews, and many acted in the name of Ukrainian nationhood. Some of the
worst pogroms occurred in Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, and Berdychiv. Jewish businesses, farms, and homes were ransacked. Hundreds of Jews were beaten and
harassed; women and girls were raped. In Zhytomyr proper, Petliura gangs
killed  Jews on – March . Twenty-three died in Berdychiv. Jewish
self-defense units prevented more fatalities in Vinnytsia and in Berdychiv.18
According to the  Soviet census of the Jewish populations in Zhytomyr,
Vinnytsia, and parts of Polissia, there were about , Jews residing in the
region; an average of  percent lived in the cities or larger towns. Indeed, the
Zhytomyr region contained some of the highest concentrations of Jewish communities in all of Ukraine.19 For centuries the Jewish shtetls in these parts were
 Introduction
hit by waves of anti-Jewish violence. Yet this area was also a haven for Jews of
the Russian empire, officially designated the Pale of Settlement. Berdychiv, a
center of Hasidism, was known as the little Jerusalem of Volhynia. Here and
in Zhytomyr, Jewish cultural, intellectual, and religious life abounded at eighty
synagogues and battei midrash (houses of prayer and study), seminaries, printing
shops, and theater houses. In the early twentieth century, thousands of Jews
moved from the shtetl communities into the larger towns; many continued on
to America. The migration was sometimes forced under tsarist laws of Russification. Others left the countryside to seek refuge from the pogroms of October
 and January , or to find new livelihoods in the expanding state bureaucracies and industries. In general the Jewish population of the Zhytomyr
region decreased dramatically between World War I and World War II; on the
eve of World War I, there were , Jews in Berdychiv, and in  there were
,.20
The Polish (largely Roman Catholic) minority enjoyed power in the region
between the fourteenth century and the eighteenth century as owners of some
of the largest estates in Europe. After the partitions of Poland and failed Polish
insurrections of the mid-nineteenth century, the tsars pursued intense Russification of the region, exiling Poles to Russia’s interior, confiscating their land
and peasants (serfs), and banning the Polish language. The former Polish aristocracy became a landless minority. In Right Bank Ukraine, many migrated to
Zhytomyr, Berdychiv, and Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi, but most settled west of the
region in Podolia and Volhynia. A few Polish communities remained intact in
Soviet Ukraine until the mid-s, most notably the community at Markhlevsk in the Polissia section of the Zhytomyr region. But with the start of World
War II and the Red Army advance into Poland, most Poles in the Soviet territories of Ukraine were deported to northern Kazakhstan, Siberia, and other
desolate parts of inner Russia.21
The ethnic German minority in Zhytomyr consisted of over , East Volhynian Germans, mostly Mennonites who began arriving in the early nineteenth century from Prussian-occupied Poland.22 They worked as foresters and
tenant farmers and formed settlements near Zhytomyr, such as Neudorf and
Alter Hütte, which the Soviets later destroyed and the Nazis tried to revive. As
a minority they had enjoyed some privileges under the tsar but were later persecuted by Ukrainian anarchists and nationalists in the wake of World War I.
They died in disproportionally high numbers during the Great Famine of –
 and suffered waves of deportations in , –, and .23
Even before the German Army and its allies conquered Zhytomyr in July
, Nazi officials expected the region’s population of ethnic Germans to serve
Introduction

as the empire’s peripheral leaders and frontier defenders. German irredentist
claims on behalf of ethnic Germans living outside the Reich’s borders had been
the cornerstone of Weimar and Nazi foreign policy during the s and s,
and indeed Hitler’s strongest pretext for initiating the war in .24 Already in
 ethnic Germans in the Zhytomyr region received food aid from the Reich
in the form of ‘‘Hitler certificates’’ as part of the Nazis’ ‘‘Brothers in Need’’ welfare program for ethnic Germans abroad.25 These recipients then found themselves the target of Stalin’s deportation raids in –. In January  Stalin
initiated the mass deportation of ethnic Germans across the Soviet Union, beginning with the Volhynian Germans from Zhytomyr (Novohrad-Volyns’kyi);
at least half of the population was transported to the frigid gulags of Murmansk and desolate camps in Kazakhstan.26 In the Nazi-Soviet pact of August
, Stalin agreed not to deport ethnic Germans, but allowed them to cross
the Nazi-Soviet line into German-occupied Poland. Hundreds of thousands of
ethnic Germans from the former Polish-held region of Volhynia, which fell
under Soviet rule, streamed into German-occupied Poland; but very few of
these Volksdeutsche came from the Zhytomyr region and even fewer from regions east of the Dnepr.27
A Note on Sources and Languages
The bulk of primary research material collected for this book stems from the
captured German records held in former Soviet archives. The Zhytomyr State
Archives collection forms the core of the study’s source material. The most topsecret German administrative documentation that survived the war, especially
concerning Hitler’s and Himmler’s presence in the region, was transferred to
restricted repositories outside the region and eventually reached the Special
Archive in Moscow, the former October Revolution Archive in Kiev, and KGB
archives. Additional high-level orders from the commander of the Order Police,
the Higher SS and Police leaders, the Reich minister for the Occupied Eastern
Territories, and other senior officials are scattered in archival collections, primarily in Minsk and Prague. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
has microfilmed a good portion of this captured German material from the
major archives of the former Soviet Union; the museum’s collection serves as
an outstanding complement to the extensive collection of wartime material
held at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration in College Park,
Maryland.
The massive quantity of captured German records presents scholars with
research challenges. As is typically the case, quantity is no measure of quality.

Introduction
The cold, bureaucratic style of the Nazi documents failed to provide a human
dimension to the story. To compensate for this lack of material about the individual victims of Nazi policies, I turned to additional sources such as postwar
testimonies from war crimes investigations, memoirs, letters, photographs,
and oral histories. In Zhytomyr, Ukrainian and Jewish survivors welcomed the
chance to finally provide a candid account of the occupation, free from the constraints of the official Soviet wartime history that played down the Holocaust,
lionized Soviet partisans, and vilified Ukrainian nationalists. These postwar
recollections can be problematic because of memory lapses and other historical inaccuracies, but the survivors provided valuable insight and information
about individuals, families, and particular villages. Often their stories can be
corroborated with secondary sources or the Nazi documents.
One final note regarding the research and presentation of this study concerns the issue of languages. Most of the primary documentation was written
in German; however, Nazi leaders were inconsistent in their transliterations of
Ukrainian names and locations. I have used, whenever possible, the contemporary Ukrainian spellings. The transliterations, which are based on the Library
of Congress system, have been simplified by the omission of diacritics. Only
some of the familiar places, such as Kiev and Crimea, appear in their more
common English forms. Use of ‘‘Zhytomyr’’ will refer to the entire region as
the Germans conceived it unless otherwise specified as the capital, center, or
town of Zhytomyr.
Introduction

Chapter 1 Nazi Colonialism and Ukraine
In twenty years the Ukraine will already be a home for twenty
million inhabitants besides the natives. In three hundred years,
the country will be one of the loveliest gardens in the world.
As for the natives, we’ll have to screen them carefully. The Jew,
that destroyer, we shall drive out. . . . Our colonizing penetration must be constantly progressive, until it reaches the stage
where our own colonists far outnumber the local inhabitants.
—Adolf Hitler, October 1941
Like its neighboring European powers, Germany pursued imperialist ambitions in the late nineteenth century that were colonial by definition: they settled in the conquered territory, exploited or developed its resources, and attempted to govern the indigenous inhabitants of the territory.1
Between  and  specifically, the Kaiserreich acquired about  million
square miles of territory in Africa and Asia with roughly  million inhabitants.
By  Germany controlled the third largest empire. For Germans in particular, colonies offered much needed space to accommodate an expanding population at home. Adopting the American model of the farm, Wilhelmine population planners and government officials, who were deeply concerned about the
mass migration of Germans who lost their völkisch identity or ‘‘Germanness’’
through assimilation, looked east as well as south for territorial solutions to
the so-called emigration problem.2
A quarter century later, Adolf Hitler too sought space for the Third Reich,
although in a significantly different fashion than previous German heads of
state. Blending geopolitical theories of empire, Germany’s own history of conquest and migration to Eastern Europe (for example, the Teutonic Knights and
Hanseatic League), and racial, anti-Semitic theories of the day, Hitler conceived
of the world in terms of geographical power blocs and racial struggles. Accordingly, as a Great Power of superior Volk, Hitler believed Germany was destined
to rule a considerable portion of the Eurasian land mass. Once conquered, this
land would be thoroughly Germanized through a long-term system of economic exploitation and revolutionary population changes. Mass deportations,
forced labor, and mass murder were the accepted means for achieving his colonial aims. As new and chilling as Hitler’s ideas for ‘‘inner colonization’’ were,
his concept of German imperial expansion did not develop within a historical
vacuum.
In general, historians of the Third Reich and the Holocaust have been reluctant to view Nazi rule in the East as a colonial endeavor, and those who follow
historian Fritz Fischer’s narrative of German expansionism tend not to connect this history to the Holocaust. Only a few works, such as Raphael Lemkin’s Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (and his unpublished history of genocide) and
Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (), have explored the relationship between European imperialism, Nazism, and the Holocaust.3 Recent
sociocultural studies have developed this notion by showing that colonialist
ideas began to take shape in eighteenth-century Germany and took on extreme
forms in the Nazi era. This emerging narrative of German colonial fantasies
does not represent another deterministic version of Germany’s Sonderweg (special path) toward Nazism; rather, it is understood within a broader European
context of exploration, conquest, migration, and mass destruction of indigenous peoples.4
Thus one finds in Hitler’s, Himmler’s, and Rosenberg’s imaginings of the
new Aryan paradise references to the North American frontier, the British Empire in India, and the European exploitation of Africans in the late nineteenth
century. In Heinrich Himmler’s SS propaganda publication, Der Untermensch,
one reads about the life-and-death struggle between Germans and Jews alongside Nazi claims to Eastern European territory depicted as ‘‘black earth that
could be a paradise, a California of Europe.’’ 5 Propaganda efforts by the regime,
including photos and films, showed ethnic German settlers driving covered
wagons adorned with portraits of their Führer.6 The name given to Ukrainian
auxiliary policemen who were active in the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto
was Askaris, a term applied earlier to Germany’s African mercenary troops.7
More than simply mimicking or exploiting the language and practices of
European colonial history and the American frontier, Nazi officials inhabited a
world of imperialism within which they defined themselves, their expansionist aims, and their non-German ‘‘subjects.’’ As Raphael Lemkin argued decades ago, genocide was linked to centuries of imperialistic warfare, forced
migrations, frontier violence, and the displacement of non-Europeans in the
Americas, Australia, and Africa. Yet only after Europe itself was destroyed by
Hitler’s Reich did this historical pattern come to light. The Nazi occupation
of Eastern Europe demonstrated that such practices were not strictly overseas
forms of conquest and rule, and that the worst aspects of colonialism—forced
population movements, slave labor, and mass murder—could be combined and
carried out on an enormous scale, in a matter of a few years, and in the heart
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
of ‘‘civilized’’ Europe. This chapter traces the history of ideas that drove this
destructive German course in Ukraine, and especially the intersection of colonialism and genocide there.
Roots of Nazi Colonialist Thinking
Nazi colonialism was first and foremost about race and space, or as the Germans termed it Blut und Boden. Nazi ideologues such as R. Walther Darré and the
Reich’s ‘‘Raumforschung’’ and ‘‘Raumordnung’’ specialists opposed the pre–
World War I policy of overseas colonies of trade and instead pursued what they
believed was a revolutionary land policy of a Germanized and economically
developed Eastern and Central Europe.8 The lure of the East had its historical antecedents in the medieval migrations of Germans to Poland and then to
the Russian empire under Peter and Catherine the Great. Additional waves of
Germans fleeing religious persecution—foremost among them Mennonites,
Baptists, and Catholics—followed in the nineteenth century. This migration
history and the German gaze to the East came to be known in cultural and political terms as Germany’s Drang nach Osten. Its underlying assumption was that
Germans were welcome as colonizers; indeed their presence was part of an ineluctable civilizing process.9
Above all the frontier metaphor, as historian Alan Steinweis has discerned,
appealed to Hitler because, according to racial and geographic studies of the
day, the ‘‘superior’’ white pioneers were not only most able to survive on the
frontier but also positively transformed by the frontier experience.10 According to Steinweis, the frontier fantasies of Hitler and his ilk were shaped mostly
by the ideas of nineteenth-century thinkers such as Friedrich Ratzel, Frederick
Jackson Turner, and Halford John MacKinder. Ratzel, who coined the concept
of Lebensraum, published an influential study, Politische Geographie (), that
stressed, with a Social Darwinistic slant, the importance of human migration
into new spaces. In Ratzel’s view, such expansionism revitalized the people
by opening up new social, economic, and cultural opportunities that might
otherwise be contained within static borders. His ideas derived in part from a
late-nineteenth-century transatlantic dialogue that included Turner’s frontier
thesis about American westward expansion, and they later spawned geopolitical concepts such as those espoused by Karl Haushofer.11 Haushofer’s theories
of imperialism, space, and power relations were taken very seriously by Nazi
ideologues, who incorporated them into Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In an important
way Haushofer reframed the traditional German focus on eastern expansion
by placing it within a global, Eurocentric perspective of empire.12
 Nazi Colonialism and Ukraine
Just prior to World War I, völkisch thought moved in a similar expansionist direction by melding race and space in a new movement for utopian settlements. Unlike the romantic utopian socialists in England, France, and North
America (for example, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen) who tried to create
rural havens away from the squalor, materialism, and crime of the first smokestack factory towns of the early nineteenth century, the imitators of the German utopians, such as the Social Darwinist Willibald Hentschel, were steeped
in racialist thought of the late nineteenth century. In Hentschel’s popular book,
Varuna (), he argued that the driving force of history was the spirit or energy
inherent in the evolutionary process of race purification. Aryans, he posited,
were among the purest race and could ensure their high standing in the ‘‘völkisch nobility’’ if they concentrated themselves into a Germanic colony. According to George Mosse’s intellectual history of völkisch thought, Hentschel’s
‘‘colony was to constitute a new beginning for the race.’’ It was supposed to
protect the race ‘‘from the corrupting effects of modernity.’’ Women played a
special role in Hentschel’s colony—they were the ‘‘breeding stock of the race
who tended the children and the settlement gardens.’’ 13
Already during World War I, German colonialist fantasies began to materialize in the form of the Second Reich’s occupation policies in Eastern Europe and
Ukraine. In , the Central Powers established a puppet regime in Ukraine
(led by Ukrainian nationalist Hetman Skoropodskyi) and negotiated control
over the largest concentration of ethnic Germans (more than ,) in the
tsarist empire in southern Ukraine. Backed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, the PanGerman League, and the former secretary of the German Colonial Office Friedrich von Lindquist, General Erich Ludendorff established a military occupation
administration that treated the eastern territories not as ‘‘a complicated weaving of lands and peoples (Land und Leute), but as spaces and races (Raum und Volk)
to be ordered by German mastery and organization.’’ 14 From an ideological,
technological, and ethnographic standpoint, World War I revealed a European
veneration of violence and capacity for total war, and within German circles
specifically a budding interest in Ukraine as a colony.15
In the interwar period Nazi Party ideologues developed these trends further
by combining the racism, völkisch nationalism, utopianism, and anti-Semitism
of the day with Germany’s long-standing romance with the frontier. Hitler’s
generation expressed outrage over the Versailles Treaty’s seizure of German
colonies because this act as the Germans saw it was a humiliating Diktat, not
because they held a special attachment to Africa or Southeast Asia. Rather than
champion imperialist ventures, early Party leader Gregor Strasser advocated
a socialist revolution at home. The Nazi Party rallied for a consolidation and
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
strengthening of the Volk and stressed Germany’s vital need to expand within
Europe, not overseas. Hentschel reemerged onto the scene with a more inflammatory pamphlet entitled Was soll aus uns werden? (What Shall Become of Us?)
(), which incited youth to band together under the God of the Aryan race,
Artam. Describing the youth as a knighthood whose duty it was to protect the
Aryan race, Hentschel provided young men with some ideological rationale for
joining the borderlands movement of the Weimar period. This movement mobilized youth to secure Germany’s eastern border with Poland by settling there,
pushing the Poles out and assisting the Germans who resided there. Among the
young men drawn to Hentschel’s Artamanen utopian movement and his promotion of eugenics and agricultural, völkisch colonies were Heinrich Himmler
and R. Walther Darré.16
The Nazis brought all of these elements together, creating a lethal concoction of racial anti-Semitism, völkisch nationalism and geo-determinism that
first appeared in the Twenty-five Points of the German Workers’ Party Program
(), the founding document of the Nazi Party. For example, Point One highlighted Germany’s right to self-determination of all its peoples, in other words,
the expansion of Germany’s borders. The third point was more overtly migrationist and colonialist. It demanded ‘‘land and territory (colonies) to feed our
people and to settle our surplus population,’’ while Point Four declared, ‘‘No
Jew may be a member of the nation.’’ 17 At this time, the Eiserne Blätter, a typical
völkisch propaganda leaflet, asked its readers, ‘‘Where is the German Colonial
Land?’’ and answered forcefully, ‘‘In Eastern Europe!’’ 18 German territorial aspirations abroad did not disappear in the s, but for pragmatic and strategic reasons they lost their widespread appeal to the more pressing matter of
Germany’s economic struggles and political survival in Europe.
Though in the short run the Nazi movement prioritized its racial and spatial aims ‘‘at home,’’ their Weltanschauung was literally a ‘‘worldview’’ of racial
showdowns. The central dynamic in this global conflict, the Nazis argued, was
the German-Jewish conflict. Without the Jews, there was (in Nazi thinking) no
struggle, no global threat, and no enemy to be vanquished. Just as he was candid about his territorial quest for Lebensraum, so Hitler did not conceal his
intense hatred of the Jews, who appeared in Mein Kampf as the Aryan’s archenemy in a zero-sum game for hegemony.19 Once in power, the Nazis effectively
spread their anti-Semitic propaganda and marginalized the Jewish population
through various destructive policies: economic boycotts; ‘‘Aryanization’’ of the
civil service, professions, and business; forced emigration and physical intimidation, including beatings and incarceration in the concentration camps.
On the foreign policy front, Hitler and his supporters were as systematic

Nazi Colonialism and Ukraine
and determined but had other ideological hurdles to overcome. For example
on the eve of Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, Alfred Rosenberg published
an editorial in the Völkischer Beobachter about Germany’s future challenge. In his
view, Germany had to combine its otherwise divergent Ostpolitik and Weltpolitik
trends in order to satisfy the ‘‘peasant’’ and ‘‘Viking’’ drives of the German Volk.
Historian Woodruff Smith summed up the point when he wrote that Hitler
and the Nazi leadership ‘‘had to solve the Weltpolitik-Lebensraum dichotomy
in the German imperialist tradition.’’ They bridged the migrationist and economic driving forces for expansion by developing an ambitious program of resettlement and economic autarky within a Nazi-dominated Europe. The merger
of these two expansionist currents—one focused on population policies, the
other on economic extraction—centered on Eastern Europe.
When Hitler unveiled his plans for seizing Czechoslovakia and Austria to the
Reich’s military leadership and his foreign minister in November , he explained that the territorial conquests fulfilled Germany’s urgent need for living
space and economic self-sufficiency. In order to feed the growing population
of Germans, to ensure its future existence, Hitler argued that Germany must
acquire fertile land in the East. As he put it:
The space needed to ensure it [food supply] can be sought only in Europe,
not as in the liberal-capitalist view, in the exploitation of colonies [abroad].
It is not a matter of acquiring population but of gaining space for agricultural use. Moreover, areas producing raw materials can be more usefully
sought in Europe, in immediate proximity to the Reich, than overseas; the
solution thus obtained must suffice for one or two generations. Whatever
else might later prove necessary must be left to succeeding generations to
deal with.20
Irredentist arguments that sought to undo the Versailles Treaty’s seizure
of ‘‘German’’ territory appealed to most Germans. In particular Weltpolitik
advocates and colonial revisionists, foremost among them Reich Minister of
Finance Hjalmar Schacht, endorsed war as the only means for regaining Germany’s lost territories and needed economic markets abroad.21 For the economic imperialists of Schacht’s generation who espoused an expansionist
Weltpolitik, Ukraine did not have the exotic allure of Africa, but it was appealing as a new agricultural and industrial marketplace.22 Meanwhile Darré’s
Blood and Soil advocates, who argued that the distant, uncultivated, foreign
land of Africa was not fertile ground for Germans, held up Ukraine as the natural place to expand. Thus in the outstanding example of Ukraine, we see the disastrous unfolding of the Nazi concept of empire-building that drew its strength
Nazi Colonialism and Ukraine

from völkisch utopian fantasies, the Lebensraum tradition of continental migration, and the imperialistic Weltpolitik tradition of economic exploitation.
Nazi Imaginings of Ukraine as a Colony
According to Nazi thinking, Ukraine was populated by inferior Slavs who
were racially unfit to rule themselves. Besides its unrivaled natural resources
and supposedly compliant population, Ukraine fit perfectly into the bellicose
plans of Nazi leaders as the ideal bulwark against Bolshevized Russia. Hitler relished the idea of a contiguous German colony in Ukraine, a ‘‘Garden
of Eden’’ where the German settler, described as ‘‘the soldier-peasant,’’ tilled
the soil with a weapon at his side, ready to defend the farm from the ‘‘Asian
hordes.’’ As for the Ukrainians, Hitler remarked that the Germans would supply
them ‘‘with scarves, glass beads and everything that colonial peoples like.’’ 23
Just over one month into the Operation Barbarossa campaign, when the German leadership assumed that victory was inevitable, Hitler spoke openly about
his plans for the conquered territories. He had just completed a brief tour of
Ukraine, including a stopover near Zhytomyr at Berdychiv on  August ,
and was thrilled about Germany’s new prospects there: ‘‘The German colonist
ought to live on handsome, spacious farms. The German services will be lodged
in marvelous buildings, the governors in palaces. . . . What India was for England the territories of Russia will be for us. If only I could make the German
people understand what this space means for our future! Colonies are a precarious possession, but this ground is safely ours. Europe is not a geographic
entity; it’s a racial entity.’’ 24 Hitler realized that the ordinary German did not
share his appreciation for colonies and his vision of a Germanized Russia.
Yet, as the ‘‘emperor’’ and self-proclaimed savior of the German people, Hitler
forged ahead with his megalomaniac, criminal plans, bolstered by the expanding popular support that his charisma had drawn. The task of Hitler’s generation, as he explained it, was to instill in the younger German settlers a feeling
of pride in being invited to the East, where they will be expected ‘‘to build up
something truly magnificent’’ and will find ample opportunities for promotion.
The following summer, Hitler returned to Ukraine and his imaginings of
empire were rekindled. The Führer’s personal architect and minister of armaments, Albert Speer, recalled an encounter with Hitler one late afternoon in
August . He found Hitler resting in the shade of tree outside his private
hilltop bungalow at Vinnytsia. As they both looked out over the expansive sky
and surrounding farmland, Hitler expounded on his imperialistic ambitions.
In contrast to the British, Hitler argued, the Germans were not only exploiting
 Nazi Colonialism and Ukraine
Adolf Hitler visits with German Red Cross nurses in Berdychiv, Ukraine,  August 
(Ullstein Bild #)
the conquered areas economically but also introducing new population policies by resettling the areas with Germanic types and suppressing the growth
of non-German populations.25 At this time and on previous occasions, Hitler
spoke about the prestige that the ordinary Briton garnered from the empire.
He admired the British ability to rule their colonies with a thin layer of officials.
The economic prospects in Ukraine also excited Hitler, who was determined
to avoid famine on the home front in Germany by plundering all the produce,
grain, and livestock for the Reich. On other occasions he described Crimea as
the German Riviera and the proposed autobahns in Ukraine as the routes for
German tourists in their Volkswagens.
Hitler’s vision of Ukraine as Germany’s ‘‘New Indian Empire’’ was not ignored by his underlings as the delusion of a madman.26 During his summer
 stay in Vinnytsia, Hitler read Ludwig Alsdorf ’s Indien, a history of British
rule in India, and urged that ‘‘every German going abroad be compelled to read’’
it, especially every German diplomat.27 One of the underlying concepts of Alsdorf ’s interpretation, which is worth pointing out, was his distinction between
two types of colonial possessions, later qualified by some as ‘‘negative’’ and
‘‘positive’’ colonialism. Alsdorf described them simply as the economic type to
be totally exploited (Ausbeutungskolonie) and the settlement type for European
Nazi Colonialism and Ukraine

migration (Siedlungskolonie). India, Alsdorf argued, was the purest example of
the Ausbeutungskolonie.28 In Ukraine, a myriad of Nazi-controlled private and
public agencies combined both types of colonialism.
What did Hitler find especially worthwhile in the Alsdorf text? In Hitler’s
view, Alsdorf correctly pointed out that ‘‘it was not the British who taught Indians evil ways; when the first white men landed in the country they found the
walls surrounding many of the towns were constructed of human skulls.’’ Likewise, Hitler continued, ‘‘it was not Cortez who brought cruelty to the Mexicans—it was there before he arrived. The Mexicans, indeed, indulged in extensive human sacrifice . . . as many as twenty thousand human beings at a time!
In comparison, Cortez was a moderate man.’’ 29 Thus, in Hitler’s binary formulation, the European white colonizer was a ‘‘moderate’’ man without evil
instincts and the Indian was his opposite, excessively cruel. According to his
logic, Jews, Ukrainians, and other non-German natives in the East were inherently barbaric, and the history of Bolshevik-led crimes served as a threatening
display of this potential.
Most likely, Hitler learned about Alsdorf ’s study from Alfred Rosenberg.
Dr. Georg Leibbrandt, one of Rosenberg’s deputies in the Reich Ministry for
the Occupied Eastern Territories and an émigré scholar from Ukraine, coedited
the book for a Nazi publication series in global history. As the senior official in the political policy department, Leibbrandt also represented the Rosenberg ministry at the Wannsee Conference.30 In fact, prior to Hitler’s promotion of the book, Rosenberg’s political policy department endorsed the Alsdorf
text as recommended reading for the regional functionaries (known as commissars) in Ukraine. Regional German leaders were also encouraged to read
Kurt Freber’s Mit dem Rucksack nach Indien (With My Backpack to India), Paul
von Lettow-Vorbeck’s Um Vaterland und Kolonie (For the Fatherland and Colony),
H. Schulz-Kampfhenkel’s Im afrikanischen Dschungel als Tierfänger und Urwaldjäger
(In the African Jungle as Animal Collector and Primeval Forest Hunter), and
Hermann Esser’s Die jüdische Weltpest (The Jewish World Plague).31
Reich Leader of the SS and Police Heinrich Himmler also picked up on the
India comparison. He exhorted his regional SS-police subordinates during a
speech at his Hegewald compound in Zhytomyr to ‘‘learn not only from the
theory but also the practice of how Englanders ruled in India.’’ As Himmler
stated more concretely than Hitler, a Germanic person could rule over a population of , natives because there were certainly , able-bodied workers among them. Plus there was stone, wood, straw, produce, and cattle there,
out of which one could create a paradise.32 Thus Hitler, Himmler, and Rosen-

Nazi Colonialism and Ukraine
berg tried to instill in their officials in the East a heightened sense of empire
and German superiority that was suggestive of Britain’s India.33
Nazi policies and practices in Ukraine took a course that veered dramatically from British rule in India.34 As patronizing as Germans leaders were, they
totally ruled out a ‘‘civilizing mission’’ of peoples they deemed racially inferior.
They destroyed the local elites and depopulated the territory.35 The Ukrainians and other Slavic ‘‘Untermenschen’’ who did not exhibit Germanic features
provided a necessary labor force but were to fade away during the next few generations. Again Hitler set the tone, declaring that ‘‘we must keep the German
colonies strictly separated from the local inhabitants.’’ He argued against educating Ukrainians, providing them inoculations, and improving any life conditions that might foster non-German population growth.36
According to the racial hierarchy of Nazi ideology in which the Germans
ranked supreme, Ukrainians fell under the Baltic peoples but above those slated
for immediate destruction—the Jews, Gypsies, and other ‘‘Asiatics,’’ followed
by Poles and to a lesser extent the Great Russians and Belorussians. Some
Ukrainians with ‘‘Aryan’’ characteristics could be Germanized, while others of
purely Slavic origin could not. In Zhytomyr, the German police forces were
trained to view the Ukrainians as a docile, peace-loving group who valued
work, land, and family. As the police guidelines put it, the Ukrainians’ nature
stemmed from their ‘‘tranquil-tolerant blood elements.’’ 37 Hitler put it more
crudely: the Slavs, having no notion of ‘‘state,’’ ‘‘duty,’’ or even ‘‘cleanliness,’’
were destined to be ruled. The Nazis’ strident attachment to hierarchical racial
taxonomies meant that once one was identified with a race, one’s fate was
largely sealed. Assimilation was unthinkable, and the ban on miscegenation,
which had also been decreed a criminal offense in the Kaiser’s colonies, was
now fully enforced in Hitler’s Lebensraum.
Though Hitler’s immediate priorities differed from that of the Wilhelmine
generation of imperialists and conservatives like General Franz Ritter von Epp
who led the Reichskolonial Bund (Reich Colonial League), he did not totally
marginalize this movement and its leaders.38 Their experience in overseas economic exploitation was brought to bear in Ukraine. A good example of this
transfer of experience and ideas is found in the Togo-Company, which pursued
one of the more famous capitalistic cotton plantation systems in Africa during
the pre–World War I era. It is worth noting that this ‘‘progressive’’ economic
system developed from collaboration between the Kaiser’s Colonial Economic
Committee and Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. They transferred
the racist ideas of ‘‘Negro labor’’ from the American South to the Africans in the
Nazi Colonialism and Ukraine

Togo. Remnants of this transfer resurfaced in  and  when the reconstituted Togo-Ost set up its headquarters for exploiting Ukrainian agriculture
in Nazi-occupied Zhytomyr.39 In a similar vein, Rosenberg established a Dutch
Trading Company in Ukraine during ; the Dutch were not only supposed
to help with the draining of swamps in Ukraine but also expected to lend their
expertise as colonial economic developers. In another telling development in
Poland, in September  regional officials brought in German East Africans
to serve as model farmers in the Warthegau. The Colonial School for Women
in Rendsburg, Germany, continued until the Third Reich’s final days, preparing girls and women for all ‘‘ ‘domestic and agricultural women’s careers’ with
an eye to ‘settlement purposes both at home and abroad.’’’ 40 Most likely, if the
Germans had had more time to colonize Eastern Europe, they would have continued to apply European models of colonization, German migrationist history
in Eastern Europe, and Wilhelmine imperial history to the making of their own
‘‘Aryan’’ Lebensraum.41
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union occurred at the same time of year that
Napoleon’s armies advanced into tsarist Russia  years earlier. On the eve of
the  June  invasion, Hitler could hardly avoid the Napoleon comparison,
but he reassured his coterie of generals and his Romanian ally, Ion Antonescu,
that the Nazi campaign would be different.42 In addition to the technical superiority of the modern, motorized forces of the Wehrmacht, the Nazi fighting forces were equipped with a lethal total war ideology that understood the
campaign as a Vernichtungskrieg against Judeo-Bolshevism. The retreat of the
Red Army into the Russian hinterland would not suffice as a victory for Hitler.
Red Army prisoners and matériel were to be annihilated. The Bolshevik threat
was not to be given any chance of reemerging. The conquered areas were to be
totally ‘‘cleansed’’ and reordered along racial lines. The Nazi pursuit of Lebensraum in the East was a multipronged campaign: a genocidal war against racial
and political enemies and a colonization campaign of German migration, total
economic exploitation, and subjugation of the ‘‘native’’ population and its culture. In places such as Zhytomyr one sees Nazi notions of progress, humanity,
and utopia not as the glimmering landscape that Hitler envisioned but as the
grisly reality of his violently racist, imperialistic ambitions.
In hindsight the Nazi colonial venture was short lived. However, Hitler and
his subordinates did not develop and implement policies expecting to lose the
war, let alone their hegemonic position in Europe. When they invaded Soviet
Ukraine in late June , they embarked on what they believed was the first
phase of a twenty-year process of Germanization. The Nazi extension of power
into the Eastern Territories went far beyond the structures of rule found in an
 Nazi Colonialism and Ukraine
imperial protectorate. Instead it was an aggregate of various far-reaching economic, political, and socio-demographic campaigns. The intent was to transform the land and its peoples more radically than any of Germany’s imperialistic neighbors had attempted before in overseas colonies or in Europe itself.
The Nazis arrogantly pursued a new racial concept of colonialism on European
soil that turned out to be one of history’s most destructive and lethal attempts
at empire-building.
Nazi Colonialism and Ukraine

Chapter 2 Military Conquest and Social Upheaval,
July–August 1941
The struggle for the hegemony of the world will be decided in
favor of Europe by the possession of the Russian space. . . .
The essential thing, for the moment, is to conquer. After that
everything will be simply a question of organization.
—Adolf Hitler, 17–18 September 1941
When Nazi officials arrived in central Ukraine in the summer
of , they were shocked by the poverty. Sovietization had changed the rural
landscape with the erection of machine tractor stations, large grain repositories, and livestock stables. However, many of the collective farmers and villagers still lived in subsistence-level conditions; their thatch-roofed cottages
and simple wooden houses often lacked plumbing, electricity, and windows.1
To the racist German conquerors, such ‘‘backwardness’’ only confirmed their
view of the Slavs as inferior as well as fueled the Nazi colonizing mission of
bringing order and progress to the region. One German intelligence official in
Ukraine went so far as to claim that Stalinism provided the Germans with a convenient base from which they could build their own empire. The Ukrainians,
he wrote, were accustomed to imperial rule and living in wartime-like conditions; therefore they would simply accommodate the Germans.2
Meanwhile, Zhytomyr’s population viewed the arrival of the Nazis through
their own distorted lens of recent history and prejudices about westerners. Few
if any among the Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Jews, and ethnic Germans could
have imagined what lay ahead. They naively handed over demographic reports
that sealed their own fate; they appeared in town centers and German headquarters looking for work assuming that the Germans would be fair rulers and
would bring economic prosperity to the region. Many of these job seekers never
returned home to their families. Within a matter of days and weeks of the occupation, the local population realized that the German occupiers of the First
World War were not those of this Nazi-led war and that German ‘‘Kultur’’ and
inhumanity were no longer mutually exclusive terms.
Among historians and laymen alike, the prevailing image of the Nazi military conquest of Ukraine has been of a blitzkrieg sweep eastward that afforded
little time for the Wehrmacht to establish and implement policy in the civilian
zones behind the battlefront. In the Zhytomyr region, however, the German
army and Himmler’s SS and police established an administration that remained
the leading authority from early July until the arrival of the civil leadership in
November . It was during this critical period that the Nazis introduced
their genocidal campaign against Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, and other socalled racial and political undesirables. The first months of Nazi rule have also
been portrayed as a honeymoon period in German-Ukrainian relations. With
the Soviet yoke lifted, Ukrainians were able to practice religion, and Ukrainian
nationalists rallied support for their cause of independence. As for the ethnic
Germans in the region, they suddenly found themselves within a new caste of
Aryan elites. By contrast, the Jews quickly learned that there was no place for
them in the New Order, and few could escape their horrible fate. The following chapter on the military administration of Zhytomyr examines how Nazi
population policies and genocidal practices took shape in the chaos of the first
months of occupation. It shows how regional German conquerors and interethnic relations within the local population fueled the terror and destruction.
After starting with the military conquest of Zhytomyr, the chapter explores the
varied indigenous reactions to the new German rulers and the establishment
of the military administration over the region.
The German Vernichtungskrieg in Ukraine
The leading German military and SS-policemen who first administered the
region were armed with an arsenal of lethal ideas as well as modern weaponry.
The Nazi Weltanschauung viewed the attack against the Soviet Union as a war of
annihilation in the racial-political struggle against Judeo-Bolshevism. In early
, if not earlier, Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, and Göring briefed leaders of
the Armed Forces (OKW), SS-police, and Foreign Office about the impending
mass murder that would accompany the anti-Soviet campaign in the East. They
worked out a division of labor reflected in such documents as the HeydrichWagner agreement over the activities of the Einsatzgruppen in the military
battle zones and rear areas. Military personnel were also expected to play their
part in the campaign behind the lines. On  May , Hitler decreed that
the army should use all measures to destroy civilian threats or attacks. Army
personnel would not be brought before the courts for actions against civilians
in the East unless ‘‘these actions effected a loosening of discipline or of army
security.’’ The High Command instructed the troops to destroy on the spot the
followers and relatives of any civilian who attacked the army in any way. If indiConquest and Social Upheaval

vidual perpetrators could not be identified, then collective measures against
entire villages were to be carried out. German soldiers who committed crimes
against civilians and soldiers of the Soviet Union did not have to worry about
possible legal prosecution, because the Hitler decree suspended courts-martial
for such acts.3
A few weeks later, on  June, Hitler issued his more famous ‘‘Commissar
Order’’: a demand for the swift execution of suspected political leaders found
among Red Army prisoners. Although this written order appeared in June, Hitler held earlier conferences with the High Command during March when he
spoke of commissars who were not to be viewed as soldiers and thus could
be executed as criminals. There were some objections to the executions that
Hitler desired. One source, Major Bechler, testified to the Russians later in the
war that Hitler had wanted to order the immediate liquidation of not just the
commissars but also all Russian officers and the intelligentsia, yet he settled,
at least explicitly, for the commissars.4
The Commissar Order and a memorandum that appeared just days before the invasion, titled ‘‘Guidelines for the Conduct of Troops of Russia,’’
represented one aspect of the Nazi leadership’s campaign to enlist the military in the destruction of Soviet Jewry, which was promoted under the popular
banner of anti-Bolshevism. Unlike previous instructions, the ‘‘Guidelines’’ to
the troops explicitly linked the Jews as a racial group to a broader category of
political enemies.5
The ‘‘Guidelines for the Conduct of Troops in Russia’’ described Bolshevism as the deadliest threat to the German people’s existence, which justified
the ruthless attacks against Bolshevik agitators, armed insurgents, saboteurs,
and Jews and the total elimination of active or passive resistance.6 The chief of
General Staff distributed these ‘‘Guidelines’’ to the infantry and security divisions, including three security divisions (Security Divisions , , and )
that were active in the military occupation of the Zhytomyr region between July
and October .7 Thus leaders in the German military helped prepare for the
invasion by drafting and distributing orders for the ruthless isolation or elimination of individuals broadly defined as Bolsheviks and resisters and more narrowly identified as Jews.
Two days before the attack, at a briefing on  June, leaders of the army security divisions assigned to Ukraine reviewed upcoming procedures for securing
the conquered territory. They expected no unusual hostility from most of the
civilian population of Ukrainians, whom they considered ‘‘German friendly,’’ 8
but they passed on the order to deal with armed insurgents and political com-
 Conquest and Social Upheaval
missars swiftly and brutally. At this point it was clear that individual officers
and not military courts were empowered to decide the fate of perceived political and racial enemies. The army and SS-police leadership embraced the inevitable bloodshed of the war as the only means to the New World Order.
The German attack against the Soviet Union commenced in the early hours
of Sunday,  June. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt (–) commanded
the invasion of Ukraine with Army Group South, consisting of the Sixth Army
led by Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau (–), the Seventeenth Army
led by Colonel General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel (–), and the First
Panzer Group led by Colonel General Ewald von Kleist (–). Hungarian,
Slovakian, Italian, and Romanian troops joined the German forces and were
also supported by Himmler’s Waffen-SS divisions Adolf Hitler and SS-Viking.
The first ground troops to reach the city of Zhytomyr on  July were from the
First Panzer Group (XXXXVIII Army Corps); they were followed by Reichenau’s
Sixth Army, while south of Zhytomyr the Seventeenth Army captured Vinnytsia.9
The German army and its allies roared through the Ukrainian cities and villages of the region like the violent thunderstorms that army personnel reported
at this time.10 Foreboding clouds hung over Zhytomyr when the German bombs
began to fall on the city. ‘‘We were running to the train station,’’ one survivor
recalled. ‘‘Everyone was trying to leave by train but the Germans were bombing
the station and railway cars, bodies lay among the rubble, children cried out
for their mothers.’’ 11 In Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyi people quickly gathered their belongings while the loudspeaker announced that the last train of evacuees was
departing. With the railways bombed and no cars, horses, or bicycles in sight,
many trudged on foot eastward. Eventually they confronted the Germans, who
had overtaken them and who then forced them to turn back.12
North of Vinnytsia, at Khmil’nyk, evacuees from western Ukraine arrived
in early July. The local population became increasingly fearful of a German attack and rushed to the ‘‘raispolkom’’ (the executive committee of the district
soviet) with the hope of learning some evacuation procedure, but the committee refused to release them from work and denied them transportation to
flee. Some Jewish residents who approached the local soviet leaders were told,
‘‘You’ve got nothing to fear; you’re not Party members.’’ 13 Soviet leaders announced that L’viv had been retaken by the Red Army in a desperate attempt
to control the panicked population, while they and other elite Party members
secretly packed their bags and arranged for transport East. Meanwhile, Stalin
ordered the destruction of industries and agricultural equipment that the Ger-
Conquest and Social Upheaval

mans would exploit.14 Even in the smaller towns around the region Stalin’s
henchmen managed to destroy hundreds of homes and brutally murdered prisoners deemed potential Nazi collaborators.15
In the Zhytomyr region, Soviet military defenses were scattered in pockets
near Berdychiv, Korosten’, and Vinnytsia. On  July , German parachute
brigades landed in the town of Liubar near Berdychiv, where they faced Soviet
infantrymen.16 The German Luftwaffe first raided the city of Zhytomyr as early
as  July . Meanwhile, the Sixteenth Motorized Infantry Division reported
from Chudniv (about forty kilometers southwest of the city) that they had captured , Soviet prisoners and deserters.17 The First Panzer Group broke
through what was left of the Stalin Line near Novohrad-Volyns’kyi (about fifty
kilometers northwest of Zhytomyr) and took Novohrad-Volyns’kyi on the ninth
and Berdychiv on the thirteenth.18 Along the way, two heavy artillery battalions (the Eighty-sixth and Fifty-sixth) reported to the First Panzer Group that
political commissars and commanders had been shot and there were cases of
suicide among commissars.19
In addition to bombs, Germans propaganda leaflets fell from the sky and
littered the fields and roadways. One popular appeal stated that the holder of
the leaflet was guaranteed a friendly reception by the German army and that
the real enemy of the Germans was the Jews, the so-called bearers of Bolshevism. In the Zhytomyr region Red Army deserters approached the Germans
with this leaflet, asking for more ‘‘passes’’ for their comrades. According to
German intelligence reports, the anti-Semitic content of the leaflet was especially ‘‘effective.’’ 20 Trusting that the leaflet was a ticket to safety, local women
and children collected and distributed them to Red Army deserters.21
On the march into the Zhytomyr region, the First Panzer Army reported that
thousands of Red Army soldiers surrendered; on  July alone the Germans
captured , prisoners. In the battle for Berdychiv (– July) more than
, Red Army prisoners were taken, and another , surrendered after the
city was taken. More than half of these men carried the German propaganda
leaflet.22 The XXXXVIII Army Corps in Liubar encountered about , POWs,
many of whom requested ‘‘more leaflets so we have something in our hands.’’ 23
German intelligence interrogators learned from the POWs that after the
commissars fled from their units, Soviet officers distributed the leaflets. Many
of the POWs were streaming in from Kiev, over  miles west of the front line.
These deserters complained of poor rations and training in the Soviet army.
They apparently believed in a German victory, not a Soviet one.24 In the German
battles for Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, and Berdychiv, more than , Red Army
soldiers surrendered.25
 Conquest and Social Upheaval
German flyer offering ‘‘passes’’ for Red Army deserters. The text at the top reads: ‘‘Beat the JewCommissar, his mug asks for a brick! Your struggle is useless! Your situation is hopeless.’’ The text
at the lower left reads: ‘‘How can it be permissible that your leadership out of stubbornness is
mercilessly driving you to inescapable death?     ! !’’ The text
in the box, which is headed ‘‘Permit,’’ reads: ‘‘Bearer of this wishes no senseless bloodbath in the
interest of the Jews and Commissars. He abandons the defeated Red Army and goes over to the side
of the German Wehrmacht. The German officers and soldiers will treat the deserters well, taking care
of them and protecting them. The permit is valid for an unlimited number of officers and soldiers of
the Red Army who come over to the German Wehrmacht.’’ Russian text translated by Vadim
Altskan. (Anti-Jewish Nazi and Collaborationist Leaflets and Announcements Made and Posted
during the Nazi Occupation of Ukraine, –, RG ., U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum, courtesy of the Judaica Institute, Kiev)
By  July General Kleist’s First Panzer Group had converged on the city of
Zhytomyr. While the Red Army had defended Berdychiv, it abandoned Zhytomyr
with the priority of establishing a strong defense of Kiev.26 Air reconnaissance
reports described the main roads around the city as deserted. Already on  July,
German tanks of the First Panzer Group had rolled triumphantly into Zhytomyr’s main square and fired artillery down Chudnivs’ka, a main boulevard radiating from the center to the outskirts of the city. Among the columns of tanks
that entered Zhytomyr were two vehicles of a special security police unit, Sonderkommando a (SKa, a detachment of Einsatzgruppe C). The Wehrmacht
Conquest and Social Upheaval

and SS-police arrived in the city together and initiated a reign of terror that
would last two and a half years.27
Initial Responses to the Nazi Invaders
Although brief, the power vacuum during the summer of  when the
Soviets had retreated and the Germans began to establish their rule over Zhytomyr offers an unusual aperture into the social and political history of the region, as well as a dramatic view of the upheaval of war. Amid the chaos, Ukrainian nationalist leaders from the region and elsewhere tried to further their
political goal of Ukrainian independence. Many others vied for positions under
the Germans with more diverse motives. At the same time, the population reacted and behaved in certain ways that give one a vivid picture of the state of
Ukrainian society in the wake of s Stalinism. This ‘‘snapshot’’ offers a basis
on which to chart the transformation of Zhytomyr during the Nazi occupation.
The composition of Zhytomyr’s population when the Germans arrived consisted primarily of the elderly and female agricultural workers who headed
households of children. It was not atypical that women dominated the home
front during wartime; however, this demographic situation was also the result
of Stalin’s policies in the s when many young men went by force or voluntarily to the distant industrial ‘‘boomtowns’’ in eastern Ukraine or were deported or killed during the Communist Party purges. Then in the spring and
summer of  several million men from central and eastern Ukraine were
drafted into the Red Army or evacuated with it.28
The remaining middle-aged men were mainly those unfit for military service
and those in lower-level positions and jobs, such as building caretakers and
tractor drivers; in addition, a small but significant number of men deliberately
stayed behind the lines to work covertly as Soviet intelligence operatives. After
the Germans released Ukrainian POWs, the male population expanded and included more skilled and educated workers such as agronomists, land surveyors,
and machinists.29 In addition to the imbalance of men and women, the major
changes of the revolutionary period created wide generational gaps; a clear social divide existed between the older generations who identified with the days
of the tsar and the younger ones who were tied to the Soviet experiment. Ukrainian men and women who came of age in the s had more schooling and
urban-related skills than previous generations, but, like their ancestors, they
retained a provincial outlook.30
The vast farmland was marked off by dirt roads and strips of houses, which
were mostly rough wooden constructions, whitewashed stone blocks, or older
 Conquest and Social Upheaval
huts with thatched roofs. A railway system connected the region’s major towns
and cities with major hubs in Zhytomyr and Koziatyn, but not far from these
centers farmers continued to make their way to the fields and between villages
by foot, bicycle, and horse-drawn carriage. The Germans quickly discovered
how terrible the roads were as their tanks and trucks got bogged down in the
mud during the summer thunderstorms. Except for some telephone and radio
communications in the larger towns, the primary means of spreading and exchanging information remained newspapers, public announcements, village
and collective farm assemblies, and rumor.
When Nazi forces first penetrated the region during the summer and fall
of , with their Luftwaffe bombers, columns of motorized divisions, and
streams of soldiers, Ukrainian farmers viewed these ‘‘invaders’’ with awe and
uncertainty. Some Ukrainians perceived the Germans literally as a ‘‘godsend.’’31
Many who hoped for land reform and a better life approached the Germans
with friendly offerings of bread and salt.32 The Germans also effectively exploited the anti-Bolshevik basis of their crusade by presenting themselves as
the ‘‘liberators.’’ Ukrainians in Zhytomyr believed that the defeat of Stalin’s
forces would bring their suffering to an end.33 To a Ukrainian who had survived a decade of famine and terror under Stalin and just witnessed the devastation caused by Stalin’s ‘‘scorched earth’’ retreat, it seemed that things could
not possibly get worse.34
In fact for Ukrainians there was reason to believe that German rule might
bring more freedom and prosperity. In the first days of the war, Wehrmacht propaganda units also dropped leaflets and put up posters that were aimed at the
civilian population. One that fell in the region was titled ‘‘A Call to the Ukrainian People.’’ In it the Germans declared that the Ukrainians were liberated
from the tyranny of Jewish-Bolshevik elements.35 They encouraged Ukrainians
to express their religiosity, which German leaders believed would foster peace
and order, by announcing: ‘‘The time of atheism is gone. The German authorities give you the opportunity to pray in freedom again.’’ 36 Pious Ukrainians rejoiced. Even before rebuilding their wrecked homes, Ukrainian peasants traveled to the nearest churches and began to restore them. Priests who had been
working in different occupations under the Soviets came out of hiding. With
icons and Bibles in hand, they went to German headquarters requesting permission to reestablish local parishes. In and around the town of Zhytomyr,
 clergymen refurbished the churches and opened six in the city itself and
fifty-four in the surrounding districts. Ukrainians flocked to the churches and
local cemeteries and participated in baptismal, funeral, and prayer services. In
Korosten’ a priest baptized dozens of youngsters and adults in the Uzh River.
Conquest and Social Upheaval

Such religious services occurred a few days after the Germans had arrived, and
some even just before the Germans arrived.37
In  (and indeed throughout the Nazi occupation), religious ceremonies
became a political tool of anti-Semites and nationalist activists. For example, in
August , the Ukrainian Orthodox bishop Polikarp (Sikorsky) from Zhytomyr, who was an outspoken anti-Semite, traveled to Luts’k for the burial ceremony of over , victims of an NKVD massacre. The ceremony gave the German military and SS-police a chance to foment anti-Jewish sentiment and local
support for pogroms. The Jews were presented as NKVD killers of Ukrainians.
Ukrainian nationalists also tried to channel the high emotions of such burial
services to swell the ranks of their own movement.38
Ukrainian Nationalist Activists
Pokhidni Grupy and the Wehrmacht
In the first weeks and months of their rule, the Germans gave Ukrainians
the false impression that the Ukrainian nationalist movement would be tolerated. Ukrainian nationalists of both leading factions established ties and
even trained with Wehrmacht and SS intelligence personnel in preparation for
Operation Barbarossa.39 Such German-Ukrainian cooperation signaled to the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) that their goal of independence
might be condoned, if not supported. While the OUN leaders organized their
own expeditionary forces ( pokhidni grupy), German military and police leaders
assumed that this relatively small and internally divided nationalist movement
could be easily controlled.
The two factions of the movement, one led by Stepan Bandera and the other
by Andrii Mel’nyk, formed task forces, each of no more than ten men and
women, which spread out across the Zhytomyr region in the summer of .
They operated in the Wehrmacht’s rear areas, mostly in rural villages where
most Ukrainians lived, not the cities where the German forces were headquartered. Each task force leader oversaw about twenty to thirty villages.40 They
usually moved from place to place at night by foot, occasionally by bicycle, and
rarely by car or motorcycle.41 Many secured German army identifications at first
officially and later illegally from a secret printing shop they established in the
city of Zhytomyr.42
Typically, one of the nationalists who arrived at his post in the region began his work by seeking out sympathizers; many had already been identified
through the underground as former Petliurists (supporters of Symon Petliura’s
Ukrainian National Republic and Army, –). Myroslav Prokop, one of the

Conquest and Social Upheaval
more prominent OUN-B leaders who later became the editor of the underground Banderite paper, Ideia i Chyn (Idea and Action), arrived in the Koziatyn
district in the summer of . After the war he recalled how he approached
Ukrainians there and elsewhere:
In my trip from L’viv to Kiev I stopped in villages in the Zhytomyr region;
I avoided the cities where the Germans were concentrated. I stayed with a
contact man in the village, a local supporter who was usually a leader of cultural activities in the village and the most educated. I would clear my identity
by addressing my contact first as my ‘‘Druh’’ (friend, not comrade) and then
state that I had arrived from such and such a place from the West. [If I had
no predetermined contact] I usually approached the younger ones who were
easier to co-opt by asking a broad question like, what do you think of the
treatment of the Ukrainians by the Soviets or Germans. If he did not respond
sympathetically then I would disappear into the night. We used pseudonyms
for personal and village names. In our written communications we wrote
on thin cigarette paper; it could be eaten if we were captured; we relied on
locals and the underground to obtain food and supplies.43
The OUN-B activists who penetrated Zhytomyr’s countryside with the Wehrmacht brought with them a bold plan to reorganize all aspects of village life, beginning with the formation of youth groups (Sich), military training sessions,
reading clubs, church programs, drama troupes, music groups, new schools,
and the like. Their main goals were () to set up an OUN administration overseeing all aspects of Ukrainian life; () to incite rebellion against the Germans
and Soviets with the goal of creating a Ukrainian State made up exclusively
of Ukrainians, and () to build a Ukrainian Revolutionary Army.44 The activists distributed the ‘‘Act of Proclamation of the Ukrainian State,’’ a declaration
that had been made public at L’viv on  June .45 They read aloud from
their pocket-sized history of Ukraine, titled Istoria Ukrainy (The Little History of
Ukraine), and formed choirs that sang the anthem ‘‘Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet.’’ 46
Bandera’s representatives compiled their own surveys of the villages, carefully listing the ethnic groups, religious affiliations, ages, occupations, names
of former Petliurists, and suspected communist enemies. They also wrote about
Zhytomyr’s cities and towns, describing the breakdown of authority, looting,
and alcoholism—a mixture of chaos, crime, and despair. One nationalist (in the
Cherniakhiv district), code-named ‘‘Kornienko,’’ revealed that the commander
of the local militia, a former officer in the Petliura army, was constantly drunk.
As Kornienko put it, ‘‘If he is not drinking vodka then he is drinking cologne
water so he has no authority over the militia.’’ 47 The commander allowed the
Conquest and Social Upheaval

plundering of Jewish homes, and the city militia of twenty-five men was bullying the locals and trying to control all of the Jewish property. Although the
local Ukrainian administration requested that the items be handed over to
the German authorities, the Ukrainian police refused to cooperate and even
bragged about their new booty.48
Kornienko and other Bandera agents described the dire economic situation
in Ukraine’s villages. In Kornienko’s territory, the retreating Soviets had destroyed the local porcelain factory, where , workers had been employed.
Many of the unemployed went to the collective farms, where they worked the
fields in the hope of securing food.49 From the village code-named ‘‘Milka,’’
another nationalist reported that during August  he and twenty-two other
activists set out to organize a number of villages around Zhytomyr, covering
a total population of , Ukrainians, , ethnic Germans,  Russians,
 Jews, and  ‘‘others.’’ The population did not have enough to eat. Instead of
potatoes and bread, the locals survived almost entirely on milk. This OUN-B
leader, code-named ‘‘RR,’’ wrote with regret that the local people required significant help and encouragement; when they were not given the means to help
themselves, then they ‘‘retreat[ed] like mice into holes.’’
The Ukrainian nationalist campaign to educate and improve conditions for
Ukrainians clashed with the German program to privilege local ethnic Germans. By placing the local Volksdeutsche into positions of mayors, village
elders, collective farm leaders, shopkeepers, militia chiefs, and school directors, the Nazis obstructed the Ukrainian nationalist quest for control over the
region.50 Equally frustrating for the Ukrainian leaders, the ethnic Germans,
who were one of the most oppressed minorities in the region, were by and large
the least qualified for such leadership posts.
Initial Nazi Support of the Volksdeutsche
During the planning stages of Operation Barbarossa, Himmler established
special task forces to rescue the Volksdeutsche in Russia (Sonderkommando
Russland), which were led by SS Brigadier General Horst Hoffmeyer.51 Hoffmeyer’s commandos followed on the heels of the advancing Wehrmacht, and,
with the help of the Sipo-SD, they began to register the Volksdeutsche coming
under Nazi control.52 Hoffmeyer’s first destination in the East was the city
of Zhytomyr, where Nazi population planners hoped to find Volhynian Germans.53
Before Hoffmeyer’s staff arrived in Zhytomyr in early September , a
subunit of Einsatzgruppe C (Sonderkommando a) began to register the eth Conquest and Social Upheaval
nic Germans there. Members of this secret police unit also reported the first
news about the state of the Volksdeutsche who had survived Stalin’s terror.
They found that the ethnic German population, which was scattered across
the region, was generally ‘‘friendly but reserved’’ and could not grasp what
the ‘‘sudden political change meant for them.’’ The Soviets had deported 
ethnic Germans from the city shortly before the Germans arrived,54 and a
much smaller number were deported from the region’s other centers, such
as Berdychiv. The rest of the ethnic German population had escaped Stalin’s
August decree that all ethnic Germans be evacuated with the Red Army. (By
the time this decree was issued, the Wehrmacht had been in Zhytomyr for
well over one month.)55 During the fighting, however, some ethnic Germans
were killed by NKVD and Red Army soldiers. According to German reports,
in Novohrad-Volyns’kyi, home to about , Volksdeutsche, the NKVD demanded that they come out of hiding during the two-day battle with the Wehrmacht; those who appeared were shot.56 Before the Soviets left Berdychiv in
early July , they aggressively searched for and murdered the remaining
Volksdeutsche. Caught in this killing spree, Volksdeutsche women and children
tried to hide in stables and dugout holes, and they sought refuge with Ukrainians.57 Staff of Himmler’s Sonderkommando a registered the Volksdeutsche
according to the German People’s List (DVL) and then offered them hot meals
from the field kitchens. Although  percent of the ethnic Germans in the region were day laborers who lacked skills, regional German commanders began
to place them in leading administrative positions, much to the ire of the rest
of the population of non-Germans.58
The few ethnic Germans qualified to work in the German administration
were passed from one Reich agency to the next, and placed in a number of
influential positions. For example, the German field commander in Vinnytsia
employed a Volksdeutsche baker named Theodor Kitzmann in his office; then
Kitzmann worked for the SS and police, and he finally moved up in the commissariat administration to be a district leader. As the highest-ranking district
leader in the native administration, Kitzmann supervised forty villages with
about , inhabitants. The new mayor of Berdychiv was a Russian German
named Reder. A leading adviser on the staff of Sonderkommando a was the
neurologist Arthur Boss, an ethnic German originally from Odessa but residing
in Zhytomyr.59 Many more Volksdeutsche proved immediately useful by filling
the military administration’s lower ranks of police auxiliaries and translators,
especially in the rural outposts across the region. They communicated Nazi
orders to the local population. Many helped identify local Jews and also participated in anti-Jewish massacres.60
Conquest and Social Upheaval

Yet Ukrainians still greatly outnumbered the ethnic Germans employed in
local administrative offices. Many Reich officials simply favored the Ukrainian
collaborators since they were considered more diligent and reliable than the
Volksdeutsche.61 In the setting of a regional German office, where a handful of
administrators were charged with seemingly insurmountable demands from
their superiors and had limited resources, ad hoc measures and short-cut solutions were the order of the day. In other words, local officials did not immediately grant ethnic Germans privileged positions because most of their ‘‘racial
brethren’’ were simply not qualified. Consequently, Nazi leaders had to convince German officials across Reich agencies that the ethnic Germans were not
to be shunned or undervalued, but rather embraced as the quintessential German victims of ‘‘Judeo-Bolshevism.’’
Ukrainian nationalist activists, civil servants, and collective farm leaders
perceived the ethnic Germans to be a nuisance and a threat. Yet they vehemently believed that the other ethnic minority in the region, the Poles, posed
an even greater danger because historically they had dominated the region and
in more recent times had persecuted Ukrainians and Ukrainian nationalists in
the interwar Polish republic.62 One Bandera activist wrote that where his supporters had dug a hole to place a cross, the Poles—who in his words organized
themselves ‘‘like the devil’’—placed their cross there instead.63 He ‘‘had a serious word with them,’’ but he then found a better place to erect the Ukrainian
Orthodox cross. When the first groups of pious Ukrainians gathered in Zhytomyr and approached the German army priest about resuming church services,
they discovered he was a Roman Catholic. Many of these locals were prepared to
convert to Catholicism, but when they realized that the Catholic services would
be taken over by the Polish population of Zhytomyr, they stopped attending
the services. In fact, in the summer of , Ukrainians in Zhytomyr openly expressed more anti-Polish and anti-Russian sentiment than anti-Jewish or antiGerman feelings.64
Interethnic tensions surfaced amid the uncertainty and carnage of the Nazi
invasion. To a large degree these rivalries were the product of Stalin’s contradictory approach of supporting local cultures while unleashing a violent sovietization of society. Most in the region who greeted the Germans in the
summer of  welcomed the defeat of Stalinism and hoped their material
conditions would improve. As soon became evident, the Nazi notion of ‘‘liberation’’ was not what Zhytomyr’s population expected. The haphazard, seemingly sympathetic approach of regional German commanders who tolerated
religious and nationalist activities was eclipsed by the more common German
method of rule: systematic intimidation and mass violence. When the Wehr Conquest and Social Upheaval
macht city commander, Colonel Josef Riedl, arrived in Zhytomyr, he immediately ordered that everyone be registered by street and district.65 Within days
German military and police administrators had lists at their disposal showing
who was Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, ethnic German, or Jewish and where each
lived. In Berdychiv, the Wehrmacht plastered posters on buildings in Ukrainian, Russian, and German stating that anyone found on the street between
: .. and : .. would be shot without warning, and that ‘‘for every
assaulted German soldier,  male civilians will be shot.’’ 66 All livestock and
farm equipment were also registered and taxed; no one was allowed to travel
beyond his or her village without permission; trade and commerce could not
continue without German approval; and anyone who plundered or inhabited
an abandoned dwelling faced the death penalty. Local military commanders
demanded that all firearms be turned over to the mayor or village elder within
twenty-four hours. If weapons were found near a village, then that village was
held responsible and subjected to mass arrests and executions. Ukrainians were
prohibited from public transport and certain shops; and food rations were only
available to workers and their families.67 German soldiers grabbed livestock
and wheat; some took a household’s one and only cow or pig.68 One of the first
German notices to appear in the local paper was a call for the formation of a
Ukrainian militia of no more than ‘‘ men armed with clubs and knives.’’ 69
The plan was to create a force of Ukrainian guards with a ratio of one guard per
ten households and to enlist the local population in the most urgent of Nazi
policies: ‘‘security’’ measures.70 Such German orders and decrees, which appeared in Ukrainian and Russian and were often signed by local Ukrainian and
ethnic German collaborators, were not empty threats issued with the sole purpose of frightening the local population into submission. Their enforcement
by the military, SS leaders, and local collaborators was far reaching.
Between July and October , the period of military occupation of the region, tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians (mainly Jews)
were executed by army and SS-police forces. The genocide began under the
cover of war and in the ‘‘euphoria of victory.’’ German occupiers established
an administrative division of labor for these programs at a remarkable pace,
driven by an extreme concern for order and coordinated action, as well as a
desire to put the ‘‘unpleasant’’ but necessary work of the regime behind them.
The speed and scope of the action paralyzed the victims, who suddenly realized the sinister intent of the self-proclaimed Nazi ‘‘liberators.’’
Conquest and Social Upheaval

Chapter 3 The Wehrmacht Administration
of Zhytomyr
Food is given out in the evening. . . . Instead of leading us into
the kitchen, they [the camp guards] shout, ‘‘To the canteens!
Run!’’ The [guards] appear and start up . . . a line using sticks,
rods, rubber truncheons—anything they can beat you with. The
usual results are head injuries, nearly broken arms, or the murder of an emaciated and weak prisoner. The beatings go on for
hours.
—Motel’e, Soviet prisoner of war, Zhytomyr, fall of 1941
During the first months of the German occupation of Zhytomyr, an administrative structure emerged across the region’s towns and villages, a structure that in its basic hierarchical form and ideological content remained consistent until the Nazis were finally pushed out of the region in .
Its defining features, which will be explored in this chapter, were numerous indigenous collaborators, an emphasis on security measures, economic exploitation, and systematic mass violence or ‘‘punitive’’ measures against civilians.
In both the military and civilian administration of the region, Himmler’s SSpolice forces played a central role and in some instances a dominant one.
The military occupation structure consisted of two distinct administrative
areas. The battle zones and their immediate rear areas were controlled by regional army staffs, such as the Sixth Army and its Rear Army offices. In the
vast areas west of these zones, the Germans established a much larger temporary administration headed by the commander of the Rear Army Group Area
South, General Karl von Roques, whose power extended over the Zhytomyr region as of  July . The regional hierarchy under Roques consisted of a
Security Division staff and their subordinates posted at field commands (Feldkommandanturen), city commands (Stadtkommandanturen), and town commands
(Ortskommandanturen).1 To secure the remote rural areas behind the lines, the
German commandants relied on indigenous collaborators, who were assigned
to the positions of raion leader, mayor, and village elder.2
At first the German military and SS-police concentrated its manpower in
the most populated areas, along main transportation routes and in selected
towns where supplies and foodstuffs were readily available, as in Radomyshl’,
where a large dairy, slaughterhouse, and brewery still operated.3 German uniforms were most visible in the cities of Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, and Berdychiv,
where the Sixth Army and Seventeenth Army held their temporary headquarters
in July and August. Heinrich Himmler’s deputy, Higher SS and Police Leader
for Russia South (Ukraine) Friedrich Jeckeln, and Heydrich’s Einsatzgruppe C,
led by Dr. Otto Rasch, also set up headquarters in the region at Berdychiv
and Zhytomyr respectively. While the Wehrmacht established its strategic command posts in the rear areas, the SS-police officials remapped the cities and
major towns into police districts. The town of Zhytomyr had four police districts, each one with a police station where three to five (Ukrainian) guards and
their German superiors worked. SS-police units as well as agents of Göring’s
Four-Year Plan supported the army’s effort to secure the newly conquered areas
and to extract as many economic resources as possible for the troops. Additional construction and technical units also arrived in the rear areas to assist
with these operations and to repair damaged bridges, roads, and other necessary facilities.
The Feldkommandantur German Rule in the Towns
In Vinnytsia, Senior Field Commander Markull established the military’s
occupation administration during August and September . Since at this
time there were so few Germans to staff the administration, Markull retained
most offices within the Soviet oblast’s administrative structure while appointing new ethnic German and Ukrainian leaders and some Russian experts to
manage the offices and implement German orders. Among his appointees was
the new mayor of Vinnytsia, Professor Aleksandr Sevast’ianov, the former director of the city’s medical institute who was of Russian-Ukrainian descent.
Markull was impressed with his education and languages skills: Sevast’ianov
had studied medicine in Germany and spoke German well.4 The mayor’s deputy
was the ethnic German Kezar Bernard. The Germans selected their aides using
diverse and ad hoc criteria, which only complicated the enormous task that
everyone in Vinnytsia faced: rebuilding a war-ravaged city whose basic infrastructure lay in ruins.
From the start, relations between the Germans and their appointees were
tense. German officers complained that the Ukrainians were poor leaders and
incapable organizers. They contended that while the Ukrainian police auxiliaries (members of the Ordnungsdienst) were very useful, they were not reliable, and often ‘‘unruly.’’ The Ukrainian police or those posing as the police
The Wehrmacht Administration

German road signs in the center of Zhytomyr, summer of  (Ullstein Bild #)
often engaged in plundering. Corruption (black marketeering) among the
Germans and their Ukrainian aides was rampant. Field Commander Markull
warned that Ukrainian militia were not to be used for private errands; their
main tasks were, instead, to supervise the Jews, patrol the streets and marketplaces, and guard military storehouses and camps.5
The army’s reliance on Ukrainian leaders from western Ukraine also strained
relations. In Vinnytsia the chief of the Ukrainian staff was a lawyer named
Luts’kyi who arrived with the Wehrmacht from western Ukraine. Likewise, the
Germans appointed as chief of the regional Ukrainian administration an émigré named Kucharovs’kyi who was originally from the Vinnytsia (Lityn) area
and returned with the German army. The army and SS-police exploited the émigré leaders from western Ukraine to help in the purging of the old administration and the securing of a new one. They had no intention of fulfilling the
émigrés’ dream of an independent Ukrainian state. Consequently, during the
transfer from military to civilian administration most Ukrainian nationalists
were arrested, interrogated, and incarcerated. Very few were able to conceal
their nationalist sympathies and remain in the German administration beyond
the spring of .6
Yet in the first months of military rule over the region, the Germans tolerated
and indeed depended on the émigrés in the administration. German and Ukrai The Wehrmacht Administration
nian leaders discussed how to resume electrical and water service and reopen
about fifty produce markets in all parts of the city. They created a fire department and a city transport service for the army. The daily food supply situation
was dire, though due to the successful pressure tactics of the army’s agricultural leaders and requisition units, daily bread rations for non-Germans were
raised to  grams per person (less than one pound). The field commander’s
office assigned local civilians to clean up the rubble at the train station and the
city’s large sugar factory. By the end of August , the post office, telegraph
office, and main bank were functioning again, but the streetcar and railway
systems were not in operation.7
According to Nazi racial theories and colonial aims, the ethnic Germans
were supposed to take on leading positions in the New Order. But this policy
had not been clearly spelled out in the military preparations and guidelines for
administering the newly conquered territories. In mid-July  Roques, the
commander of the Army Group South Rear Area Administration, presented his
own plan for the Volksdeutsche. He ordered that ethnic German POWs not be
released from the camps since they had not taken up the offer in the past year
to resettle in Germany and, therefore, were deemed racially worthless.8 But
Roques’s approach did not go over well. He had to rescind this order a month
later when he was instructed by the Army High Command to release certain
groups of POWs, first and foremost reliable ethnic Germans. Meanwhile, in a
special report to Roques, Karl Stumpp (who was attached to an army intelligence unit) stressed the usefulness of ethnic Germans in the administration as
informers and translators. Apparently swayed by Stumpp’s argument, Roques
ordered all army offices to support the ‘‘needy’’ ethnic Germans by placing them
in administrative positions and by establishing community credit and loan programs. Subsequently, the army published an October  order in the local
newspaper, Holos Volyni, requiring that all ethnic Germans report to the labor
office for work at military bases.9
When the rear area commanders and their collaborators confronted problems that inevitably arose, such as food and housing shortages, they assumed
that the ‘‘disposable’’ racial or political sectors of the population were to be
exploited as part of the solution. They assigned trash collection and street
cleaning to the Jews and collected a ‘‘contribution’’ from the Jewish community since, Nazi leaders claimed, the Jews had plundered many wares in order
to barter with the farmers for agricultural goods. In fact, Markull and his associates turned a blind eye to the welfare of the entire Jewish population by relegating the complete care, feeding, and health of Vinnytsia’s Jewish population
to the newly formed Jewish Council (the Sipo-SD massacred the first Jewish
The Wehrmacht Administration

council in early August). The mentally ill and physically disabled in Vinnytsia
did not receive rations or proper care. Some died of famine-related illnesses
and others were killed in mass shootings and by lethal injections.10
The Ortskommandanturen German Rule in the Countryside
The tentacles of the German administration stretched out to the region’s
smaller towns where German military commanders established twenty-five
rural command posts (Ortskommandanturen). Like their counterparts in the
more populated areas, the army commanders in the villages concentrated on
three areas of administrative priority: security interests, economic measures,
and local administration. To start with, the village commanders notified the
population that they must surrender all weapons immediately; anyone found
hiding arms was treated as an insurgent—that is, killed. Then, with the help of
local Ukrainians and ethnic Germans, the Wehrmacht’s village commanders
conducted the registration of the population, ‘‘especially the Jews,’’ who were
forced to wear armbands. Economic-related duties were limited to two priorities: the securing and guarding of valuable resources, and the reporting of the
status of these resources to the nearest field commander and the economic inspectors’ outposts.11
The German village commanders and security forces ventured out on patrols
and raids to the smaller towns on a fairly regular basis, but they lacked the manpower to actually implement orders in the villages. Thus in these first weeks
and months of military rule over the region, the army commanders constructed
an administrative hierarchy of Ukrainian and ethnic German raion leaders, village elders, and militiamen.
The German field commander from Vinnytsia, Markull, became directly involved in the search and appointment of Ukrainian district leaders. From  to
 August, Markull traveled by car and horse-drawn cart southwest over Zhmerynka to Bar, Kopaihorod, Kurylivtsi, Murovani, Ivanivka, Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyi,
Iampil, Chernivtsi, Sharhorod, and Stanislavchik to find ‘‘suitable’’ Ukrainian
district leaders.12 In his travels over partially paved roads and through open
fields, he came across very few Reich Germans, except for the Wehrmacht
commanders posted at Bar, Zhmerynka, and Mohyliv.13 When Markull arrived
in a town, he was greeted by the Ukrainian mayor and leading intelligentsia
(doctors, agriculturalists, engineers, and the like). After a three- to four-hour
discussion with these local representatives, Markull selected a district leader
(Rayonchef ) and presented him with his special identification papers in German
and Ukrainian. He told the leader that he would be held fully accountable for
 The Wehrmacht Administration
the implementation of German orders. He was not permitted to carry a gun,
but only a club, knife, or pointed weapon. His name would be publicly posted
as the authority approved by the Germans.14 The new leader’s contract with the
Germans was sealed with a handshake. Markull appointed twenty-five district
chiefs around the city of Vinnytsia. Across the entire Zhytomyr region, the Germans posted about seventy-five Ukrainian (and some ethnic German) district
leaders.
One of the first administrative requirements of the local leaders was to
gather extensive information about the ethnic and political composition of the
population, in particular providing the locations of Jews, Roma, POWs, and
other targeted groups.15 In Vasilevichi (where Red Army deserters were presumed to be hiding) Ukrainian district chiefs were also asked to submit reports
about any persons who had not been residents of their respective areas before the war; they were to be identified under four categories: () families with
children; () POWs with proper release papers; () POWs without papers; and
() stragglers without a fixed place of residence who took up local residency
during the invasion. Such reports included detailed lists of the populations,
ethnic groups, and their whereabouts. The lists were based on prewar Soviet
nationalities surveys. Thus Soviet records were used to implement Nazi policies, including the Holocaust.16
Indigenous Collaborators in the Wehrmacht
Administration Auxiliary Police
In carrying out their tasks, the local administrators were allowed to employ
very few assistants besides the militia. One of the first acts of the local elders
and mayors was to form a Ukrainian ‘‘Order Service,’’ or militia. The elders and
mayors submitted lists of Ukrainian police candidates to the Germans for approval.17 The size of the militia groups usually did not exceed fifteen men; militia members were on average twenty-five years old. By contrast, in the region’s
centers, such as Vinnytsia, hundreds of auxiliaries serviced the more numerous Reich officials and their offices as well as enforced German orders on the
entire population. Markull relied on seventy Ukrainian Order Service men. In
both the towns and the villages, the auxiliary police did not wear full uniforms;
usually just an armband marked their official status. They carried clubs; in 
very few if any were trusted with guns.18
The Wehrmacht and SS-police also recruited policemen from among the
prisoners of war. These former Red Army soldiers had much to offer. They were
young, able-bodied men with some military training, and given the deterioThe Wehrmacht Administration

rating, desperate conditions in the POW camps, they could hardly refuse the
German bid to join the security and police forces. A minority of these recruits
became the worst and most notorious of the indigenous SS-helpers, the Trawniki guards and the ‘‘Askaris’’ (who would later help the Germans destroy the
Warsaw Ghetto).19
Before the invasion and in the summer of , Heinrich Himmler (whom
Hitler charged with all security and police matters in the newly occupied territories) worked out an elaborate plan for utilizing Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian,
and Estonian policemen (known as Schutzmannschaften). But Himmler’s orders
for the Schutzmänner applied to the civilian zones, not the military. Wehrmacht
employment of indigenous police aides was done on an ad hoc, as needed basis.
Thus in Zhytomyr on  July , the German military commander announced
in the local newspaper, Ukraïns’ke Slovo, the formation of a new police force.
The announcement specified that there should be one policeman for every ten
households. Many Ukrainians responded to the offer, even though the job was
unpaid. Within a two-month period the Germans selected and deployed ,
Ukrainian Hilfspolizei in the northern half of the region alone.20
Mayors, District (Raion) Leaders, and Villages Elders
There existed some similarities among the appointed indigenous leaders.
Nearly all of them had a middle school education and were among the local
professional class of teachers, doctors, priests, and bookkeepers. They were
mostly over forty years of age, so they had grown up in the tumultuous years
of World War I and the Bolshevik revolution. Many had held a leadership position comparable to a mayor or a deputy mayor. A few of the older ones were
middle-ranking civil servants during the tsarist period. Not all were from the
region they presided over. Field Commander Markull described the typical local
leaders as umsichtig (willing to help), but he also disparaged them as apathetic,
lazy ‘‘natives,’’ whose work ethnic had been destroyed by the repressive Soviet
system.21
To the Germans’ disappointment, Ukrainian district leaders and village
elders were not always willing to implement their orders with the expected enthusiasm. So German leaders used certain methods to test the reliability of the
district leaders and elders. Shortly after the Germans arrived in Popil’nia in the
summer of , they approved a Ukrainian named Vytovts’yi to be the elder.
In order to demonstrate his commitment to the Germans, the local German
agricultural leader asked Vytovts’yi to beat one of his ‘‘neighbors.’’ 22
The Germans were not hard pressed to find Ukrainian and ethnic German
 The Wehrmacht Administration
aides to fill the administrative positions. Each day locals arrived at the village
commander’s post or the city labor office with the hope of finding a job. These
job seekers presented handwritten requests to the Germans, often detailed letters that described their suffering and losses under the Soviets and included
desperate pleas to help feed their children who lacked shoes and clothing.23
Some joined the German administration because they wanted to use their position to rescue friends and relatives who were held in Nazi prisons and camps. At
the end of August, a Ukrainian administrator working for the Germans named
Liuboms’kyi used his position to request that his son be released from the POW
camp in Vinnytsia.24 Leading Ukrainian administrators in Zhytomyr, many with
a nationalist orientation, tried to establish Ukrainian self-help committees and
cooperative organizations, including a regional Ukrainian Red Cross.25
The war created massive unemployment. Local industries had been destroyed during the Soviet evacuation and the German bombing raids.26 The
German military and SS-police assigned all those capable of working to road
and railway construction, prison camp operations, farming, forestry work, and
other tasks.27 According to German labor policy, Ukrainians who did not work
were not provided with ration cards.28 Prisoners of war in the camps and all
Jews performed forced labor for the Germans, receiving no wages and inadequate food rations. For those who were eligible and willing to take them, the
jobs in the German administration seemed to be the best. Even the lowest-level
office jobs paid at least double the monthly wage of a factory worker or agricultural laborer. Ukrainians and ethnic Germans in the higher-level positions
such as raion leader received between , and , rubles per month, which
was considerably more than the Soviets had paid.29
With their Ukrainian and ethnic German administrators and police aides in
place, Nazi military leaders issued a stream of decrees to establish German rule
in the region: collect all munitions, establish curfews, register livestock, impose new taxes, restrict the use of public transport and roadways, and prohibit
contact with POWs. The militia enforced a number of anti-Jewish regulations,
such as the distribution of armbands, closing of Jewish businesses, and formation of Jewish labor battalions. Militiamen also pressed collective farmers and
peasants to cultivate more land.30 Any elder or raion leader who did not comply with German orders was, according to Nazi policy, treated as an enemy of
the Reich and therefore executed.31
The Germans needed indigenous helpers to administer and exploit the newly
conquered territory. Their short-term and long-term colonial aims of racial
Germanization and economic autarky could not be achieved without local accomplices, auxiliaries, and laborers. Although they were able to find a sufficient
The Wehrmacht Administration

number of indigenous administrators and policemen to assist them, German
leaders increasingly confronted other shortages of labor and supplies. Rubble
needed to be cleared and bridges to be repaired; roads were impassable; and
electricity, clean water, and basic building materials were scarce. These kinds of
shortages and construction demands persisted over the entire German occupation period. What is striking is that despite basic deficiencies, German military
leaders and the civilians who succeeded them allocated enormous manpower
to ‘‘pacification programs’’ and ‘‘security measures.’’
When conflicts arose over economic or more pragmatic needs and the regime’s ideological aims, usually the ideological ones prevailed. In this regard
the Nazis broke with their forefathers who conquered and colonized parts of
Africa. In the Wilhelmine era, the genocidal impulses of the army and its regional administrators were sometimes tempered by a strong consensus that
the colonies must be profitable and that the ‘‘natives’’ were valuable as a labor
force. Plus biological racism, although historically rooted in European encounters with non-Europeans during the nineteenth century (if not earlier), was in
theory and practice more systematically developed and operative in the Nazi
empire than in the Wilhelmine one.
Consequently, in the Nazi case, Hitler’s chief of staff of the Armed Forces
High Command, General Wilhelm Keitel, implored his subordinates not to employ Jews despite the acute labor shortages, arguing that ‘‘the struggle against
Bolshevism demands ruthless and drastic action, especially against the Jews,
the bearers of Bolshevism.’’ 32 Either by choice or under pressure from above,
German regional leaders prioritized racial aims over economic ones. Markull
complained about the lack of available manpower while he simultaneously approved the executions of civilians—at least , persons who by and large were
not guilty of a crime but considered racially worthless or politically threatening
to the Germans.33 The prevailing Nazi view was that the Germans would not
be able to secure their presence in the region and begin the necessary transformation of it without first destroying their biggest threats: Judeo-Bolsheviks as
well as other ‘‘racial defects.’’
Wehrmacht Security Measures
Roques, Stülpnagel, and Reichenau
Scholars such as Alexander Dallin and Timothy Mulligan have elucidated
the conflicts among the various German agencies sent to govern and exploit
the Soviet territories. There was one area, however, in which all agencies consistently cooperated and dedicated their resources: ‘‘security’’ measures. To
 The Wehrmacht Administration
this end, agencies shared manpower, matériel, and information. For example,
Himmler’s police leaders trained the Ukrainian police, and the individual recruits were checked by the SD; but the Wehrmacht village commanders actually enlisted them, outfitted them, and assigned them to their routine tasks
of guarding buildings, roadways, and transports of prisoners. For the largest
‘‘cleansing’’ campaigns in the northern Pripiat’ marshland, Wehrmacht commanders called in the First SS Brigade to assist in the joint SS-army raids. District agricultural leaders, economic units, and armed Ukrainians in the Polissian Sich also worked closely with the army field commanders and police by
patrolling the rural areas and reporting the presence of ‘‘suspicious’’ persons
hiding in the forests and fields.34
Besides SS-policemen, units of the army’s Security Divisions were the most
active in the pacification measures around Zhytomyr. Entire Security Divisions,
with their foot soldiers numbering in the thousands, descended on small villages and scoured the countryside for ‘‘saboteurs’’ and ‘‘insurgents.’’ Women
were not spared in these German rampages. On the contrary, they were considered especially dangerous. The Seventeenth Army near Vinnytsia captured
women among the Soviet troops and ordered that all uniformed women be
treated as POWs and nonuniformed women as insurgents—that is, killed.35
Not long after Zhytomyr fell into the hands of Commander Karl von Roques’s
Army Group South Rear Area Administration, he issued a memorandum about
‘‘pacification measures’’ being carried out under his purview.36 A veteran of
World War I and the Reichswehr, Roques wrote about the involvement of Wehrmacht soldiers in ‘‘excesses that are being instigated against certain sections
of the civil population.’’ The German soldier, he wrote, ‘‘who participates in
Jewish pogroms etc. damages to the utmost the reputation of the army and displays an unsoldierly attitude.’’ While Roques expressed some disapproval of a
soldier’s direct involvement in anti-Jewish massacres, he did not object to the
massacres. He referred to Hitler’s order explicitly allowing soldiers to ruthlessly kill enemy civilians in the course of fighting action (underlined by Roques). As
for prisoners of war, they too were to be killed if they escaped from the POW
camps and the Germans were able to capture these ‘‘insurgents.’’ 37
Furthermore, Roques wrote that soldiers who commit excesses outside the
realm of regular warfare ‘‘should be brought to trial’’ and that ‘‘commanders
who do not make it a point to find and bring these persons in for trial are not
the right persons for their position.’’ Roques seems to have disapproved of the
rampant killing of civilians in his area, but he phrased his ‘‘protest’’ in terms
of the chaos that the killings created and, in deference to Hitler, reiterated that
such killings were to be carried out as part of the warfare.38
The Wehrmacht Administration

Roques’s memorandum reveals several significant developments. First, the
mere existence of this and similar high-ranking orders about ‘‘excesses’’ confirms that the German army did participate in varying degrees in the atrocities committed against POWs, Jews, and other civilian ‘‘threats’’ in occupied
Ukraine. Second, certainly not every German officer or soldier approved of
the mass executions of Jews, but the few objections that did emerge on paper
were critical of the lack of order such actions precipitated. It remains unclear
whether this concern for order represented an attempt to criticize Nazi-style
warfare against civilians, or an attempt to distance army personnel from what
might have been viewed as Himmler’s ‘‘messy’’ tasks. Third, Roques’s memorandum implicitly raised the issue of accountability. He warned that dismissals
and legal prosecution were still possible responses to those who behaved ‘‘excessively’’ or ‘‘unsoldierly.’’ As stern as his warning sounded, in reality very few
soldiers who plundered or committed ‘‘excesses’’ were brought before military
courts. However, those who were prosecuted could and did receive the death
sentence.39
Like Roques, General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel (commander of the Seventeenth Army) admonished his troops not for the murder of civilians but for
their arbitrary methods or disobedient approach. Stülpnagel, who was later
executed for his association with the July  plot to kill Hitler, criticized the
then-current practice of seizing hostages prematurely for future denunciations
and disapproved of random collective measures. He condemned the ‘‘wild’’ behavior that was being displayed by his subordinates who participated in the
pogroms against Jews.40 To institute a more efficient punitive measure, Stülpnagel instructed his troops to blame the Jews and communist civilians for local
acts of resistance. After all, he explained, the remaining communists were
mostly young Jews and they were to be sought out anyway.41
While conducting a murderous policy against the Jews, Russians, and other
so-called Asiatic elements, the army tried to promote ‘‘peaceful’’ GermanUkrainian relations. Stülpnagel asked that his subordinates give Ukrainians
the impression that German rule was fair. Nazi persecution and reprisal measures were not to be directed against the ‘‘helpful’’ Ukrainians.42 Even in the
rare cases of a Ukrainian act of sabotage, one local army officer of the Zhytomyr
region wrote, the Jews would still be held responsible and not the Ukrainians
because, according to this officer, the Ukrainians had been especially cooperative.43
In a formal communiqué to the soldiers of the Seventeenth Army, headquartered in Vinnytsia, Stülpnagel disclosed how the army leadership struggled to
uphold traditional notions of soldierly conduct while unleashing widespread

The Wehrmacht Administration
violence behind the lines. He wrote that the real civilian danger lurked among
the Jews and POWs who were dressed in street clothing. It was in the Germans’
best interest, he believed, to maintain favorable relations with the Ukrainians
who might be persuaded to support partisans and who were working the land
for the Germans. Stülpnagel criticized the German soldiers who pillaged Ukrainian farmers’ homes during the day while they worked in the fields, and he
sternly warned that plunderers would be brought before a court. In fact, Stülpnagel argued, ‘‘the fight against a loosening of discipline must be as strong as the fight
against resistance efforts of all kinds found among the populace.’’ 44 There were some
shades of difference among the military leaders, with some more starkly supportive or resistant to atrocities against POWs and civilians. Yet they coalesced
around the policy of murdering Jews.
During August  the Wehrmacht’s concern for discipline and order
within its own ranks, combined with the realization that the number of victims was expanding, prompted the leadership to refine their task-sharing system with the SS-police, as well as to strive for more efficient security operations. The local military and SS-police intelligence offices shared information,
but regional commanders of both agencies still needed to work out a division
of labor for carrying out the mass murder.45 The High Command of the Sixth
Army ordered that army soldiers should not get involved in executions of Jews
unless ordered to do so, because it was primarily the task of the SD. According
to this order: ‘‘In the different villages of the region where organs of the SD
and SS carried out the necessary executions of criminal, Bolshevik elements,
mainly Jews,’’ off-duty soldiers had volunteered to assist the SD with executions. They were also taking photos of the executions. Soldiers could continue
to participate in mass executions but only with an officer’s approval; the SD
could also rely on Wehrmacht village commanders to provide guards for sealing off execution sites from observers.46 In early August the head of Einsatzgruppe C, Otto Rasch, reported that in the Zhytomyr region relations between
the army and SD were ‘‘cordial’’ and that ‘‘army circles show a steadily growing interest in and understanding of tasks and matters concerning the work
of the Security Police . . . particularly during the executions.’’ Moreover, this
SD report continued, the army was pursuing the tasks of the Security Police,
arresting communists and Jews.47 Thus soldiers were not forbidden to participate, and the executions themselves were not questioned; rather, the degree
of the army’s participation was more clearly defined and coordinated with the
SS-police.
More than Roques and Stülpnagel, Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau directly shaped the army’s involvement in the mass murder that occurred in the
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rear areas. As commander of the Sixth Army, Reichenau argued that army involvement in atrocities against Jews and other civilians was necessary for securing Germany’s rule over the conquered areas. In his infamous October 
memo, which was widely circulated with Hitler’s blessing, Reichenau wrote
that the German soldier be ‘‘not only a fighter according to the rules of the art of
war, but also the bearer of a ruthless national ideology. . . . The struggle against
the enemy [‘Jewish subhuman elements’] behind the front is still not being
taken seriously enough. . . . The soldier must fulfill two demands: () the complete destruction of the Bolshevik heresy, the Soviet state, and its army; () the
merciless extermination of alien treachery and cruelty and with it the securing
of life for the German army in Russia.’’ 48 Reichenau, who had distinguished
himself as a devoted Nazi during the Polish campaign of , requested the
use of the First SS Brigade for ‘‘mopping-up operations’’ in the Sixth Army
areas. Friedrich Jeckeln, who was commander of the First SS Brigade, complied.
The brigade did such a thorough job, that Reichenau awarded them combat
medals for carrying out atrocities against civilians and POWs near Zhytomyr.49
While senior commanders like Reichenau and Roques arranged joint SSarmy pacification campaigns, units of the Wehrmacht’s Security Divisions established a routine of patrolling the streets and searching the villages labeled
partisan nests.50 Three Security Divisions swept through the Zhytomyr region
during the summer and fall of .51 Security Division  was composed of
regular army troops and police units: Infantry Regiment , Police Battalion
 (formerly of the Breslau Order Police), and the army secret field police units
(Geheime Feldpolizei , , and  and Landesschützen Battalions ,
, and  and Regiment ).52 The Security Divisions coordinated their
pacification campaigns with the available units of Higher SS and Police Leader
for Ukraine Friedrich Jeckeln. In the area of Novohrad-Volyns’kyi and Berdychiv, Security Division  collaborated with members of Order Police Battalions  and ; in Vinnytsia, Security Division  worked with staff from
Order Police Battalions , , and . The Security Divisions’ primary assignment was to pacify areas behind the front and protect military installations
and transportation routes. They pursued the ‘‘enemy’’ in remote areas, carrying
out arrests, reprisals, and executions. Security Division officers at the battalion
level were briefed on the eve of Barbarossa about the ‘‘Commissar Order’’ and
‘‘Guidelines for the Conduct of Troops in Russia.’’ 53 In many respects, their
security activities overlapped with the secret police tasks of Himmler’s forces.54
When the Rear Area occupation officials arrived in Zhytomyr on  July, City
Commander Riedl ordered members of Order Police Battalion  (attached to
Security Division ) to begin the ‘‘pacification’’ of the inner city and its sur
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rounding areas. They conducted their ‘‘systematic manhunts’’ with the small
commandos of Einsatzgruppe C.55
During the course of the military occupation the numbers of policemen and
soldiers assigned to the divisions increased significantly, which from the Nazi
perspective created the possibility for more extensive ‘‘cleansing operations’’
behind the lines. Security Division ’s fighting strength when it arrived in
Zhytomyr during the last week of July was  officers,  noncommissioned
officers, and , enlisted men, and by October it had grown to  officers,
, noncommissioned officers, and , rank-and-file soldiers.56 Actually
these figures represent only a fraction of the security presence in Zhytomyr
during August and the first half of September because additional Wehrmacht
soldiers and technical personnel traveled through the area and assisted with
security measures along with thousands of SS-policemen.
At first the army’s security forces (like Heydrich’s secret police commandos)
focused their raids around German headquarters and the Wehrmacht’s main
transit routes.57 But when the military’s rapid advance suddenly slowed in August, they found themselves quartered in the area for a longer period. They
had the time and manpower to expand their operations. Often their searches
were incited by Ukrainians who lodged an overwhelming number of complaints
about ‘‘armed Russian gangs’’ roaming the villages and forests. In response,
units of Security Division  fanned out along the main roads and into the
smaller villages around Zhytomyr, Berdychiv, and Biela Tserkva.58
In , however, while there were large numbers of Red Army deserters
and civilian refugees, there were very few organized partisan groups operating in the region, and so-called antipartisan warfare became a German cover
for carrying out atrocities against civilians and Red Army stragglers. At this
stage in the war, ‘‘antipartisan warfare’’ was a mendacious slogan for securing territory where little resistance to German rule existed. For example, near
Levkovychi soldiers from Infantry Regiment  responded to Ukrainian reports of roaming bands. The soldiers disguised themselves in civilian clothing
and searched the nearby forests on  July. Anyone found hiding in the woods
was placed in an enemy category at the discretion of the German officer. The
lowest-ranking German officers were empowered to shoot ‘‘insurgents’’ on
the spot.59 In mid-August, Ukrainians in Emil’chyne reported to a local German commander that , Russian soldiers who were disguised in civilian
clothes were working in the fields. To fight the ‘‘partisans,’’ Roques deployed
Security Division  and the First SS Brigade to the area. On  August 
they opened fire on them, taking  prisoners, and killing .60 The First
SS Brigade tersely reported that this raid in Emil’chyne was a ‘‘success’’: a few
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prisoners were taken and a number of Jews shot.61 Sipo-SD commandos of Einsatzgruppe C also routinely responded to Ukrainian reports. Rasch, the commander of Einsatzgruppe C, wrote that the exaggerated reports of partisan attacks from Ukrainians made it ‘‘possible to ferret out the places of Bolsheviks,
Jews and asocial elements following the reports.’’ 62 Thus the paranoia about
‘‘enemies behind-the-lines’’ spread throughout the German ranks as well as
within the local population. The German field commander in Vinnytsia and
intelligence officials in Zhytomyr admitted that the Ukrainian reports of ‘‘Russian gangs’’ were inaccurate or distorted. Commander Markull stated that the
locals spoke fearfully about bandits, but without any particular details. ‘‘Personally,’’ he wrote after touring the area, ‘‘I do not think that the bandits are
very dangerous.’’ 63 Still the persistent rumors about bandits fueled the machinery of destruction by providing the Germans with a popular rationale for
‘‘cleansing’’ more remote areas outside the cities of Zhytomyr, Berdychiv, and
Vinnytsia, often by a combined force of army and SS units.64 The exaggerated
nature of the Ukrainian denunciations reflected the widespread paranoia.65 In
at least one recorded incident, it is clear that the ‘‘bandits’’ that Ukrainians
feared were actually Jews, probably refugees who were trying to avoid captivity
or death at the hands of the Germans. An Einsatzgruppe C official observed that
the locals frequently withdrew their reports when they realized that they had
placed the lives of these individuals in danger.66 Still, as Hitler had advised in
his private remarks of  July , the Germans were to exploit this turbulent
atmosphere. For local commanders, arrests and executions became a standard
response to Ukrainian fears of threatening gangs lurking in the woods. Thus
the real or imagined threat of guerrilla attacks intensified the German search
for and killing of ‘‘suspicious’’ persons, and it provided local officials with an
acceptable rationale for destroying Red Army POWs and civilians.67
One outstanding incident further illustrates this development. In the territory of Polonne-Horodnytsia, Battalion  of Infantry Regiment  carried out
a security raid that reportedly was a ‘‘success,’’ to the extent that another company of the battalion was called in. In the first week of August, German troops
or officials had yet to infiltrate this area. According to the German version of
events filed in an after-action report, when a company of Infantry Regiment
 reached the town of Volodars’k-Volyns’kyi on  August, it found that many
of the Ukrainians and ethnic Germans had fled because Russian soldiers had
taken over the town, and (the Germans claimed) the local Jewish community
had assisted the Russians. The regiment had little success in ferreting out the
Russian partisans from the surrounding forests; three partisans were in German custody.
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The commander added at the close of his report that this operation was
an especially exhausting experience and the men should be relieved.68 It was
exhausting for a battalion of about  men to bring in three prisoners? A
few weeks later, when the First SS Infantry Brigade was mistakenly assigned
to ‘‘cleanse’’ this same area, it found neither Jews nor Bolsheviks because, according to the brigade’s report, Infantry Regiment  had done a ‘‘thorough
job.’’ 69 And on the morning of  August, the Soviet Information Bureau broadcast that unheard-of tortures had occurred in Volodars’k-Volyns’kyi. According
to this bulletin (which was published after the war), German officers and Ukrainian nationalists in ‘‘drunken bands’’ herded civilians into a barn, plucked out
their eyes, broke their limbs, chopped them into pieces, and burned them alive.
Despite the propagandistic tendency of the Soviet reports, the bulletin at least
establishes the occurrence of massacres at Volodars’k-Volyns’kyi in the first
half of August .70 This gruesome massacre seems to hint at a Jedwabnelike outburst in Ukraine. Ukrainian involvement in the Holocaust will be taken
up in chapters that follow, but it should be mentioned here that no evidence has
emerged from the Zhytomyr region that compares with the concerted Polish
attacks against Jews in Jedwabne, Poland. In the Zhytomyr region, Ukrainians
did not collectively plan and carry out the mass murder of their Jewish neighbors independently of the Germans.71
The Wehrmacht’s Camp System and the
Fate of the Prisoners of War
By the end of August , commanders of Security Divisions in Zhytomyr
realized that the prisoner population was far greater than they could manage.
Generally the Germans used the existing Soviet prisons and NKVD buildings
for their interrogations and incarcerations. But the repeated orders to seize just
about anyone within grasp resulted in a prisoner population that exceeded the
region’s prison and camp space. Around Vinnytsia, all unmarried males between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five were deemed suspect and arrested.72
A ‘‘mass arrest of the people has to cease,’’ one frustrated official wrote.73
To remedy this problem, Roques’s administration ordered that ‘‘those without
some grounds for arrest should be released if their village is nearby and free of
partisans,’’ 74 but those who ‘‘seemed disagreeable’’ should be left in the internment camp or given over to an SD commando; the military was not to dump
them across the border into the General Government, as apparently some German leaders had attempted to do.
While the number of civilian internees was growing, the more pressing issue
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at hand was the enormous number of POWs. Tens of thousands had been captured in the Zhytomyr region during the fighting of July and August , and
more continued to stream in as the Wehrmacht advanced eastward. Additional
Red Army soldiers who hid in the forests of the region were swept up in the
security raids and crowded into the camps. The deplorable conditions of the
camps alarmed local commanders, who feared the spread of disease and social unrest but expressed no remorse over the high mortality rates among the
prisoners. The tragic fate of the POWs, however, was not solely the result of
unforeseen circumstances or regional conditions.
In May , shortly before the invasion, perfunctory plans were drawn up
to build a limited number of POW camps and to use the prisoners as forced
laborers. The Soviet POWs were not to enter the German Reich but were to remain in camps where they could not ‘‘infect’’ the German race with their Slavic
Bolshevism. The German leadership did not concern itself with the basic care
and nourishment of the millions of prisoners it predicted would be captured
in a blitzkrieg defeat of the Soviet Union.75 In the event that the international
community protested their maltreatment of Soviet prisoners, legal experts in
the Armed Forces High Command came up with the rationale that the Soviet
Government refused to sign the  Geneva covenant on the treatment of prisoners of war so the Reich could treat them as it saw fit, as ‘‘Untermenschen.’’ 76
All food supplies were channeled to the Reich and armed forces, and in
principle were not available for the ‘‘superfluous’’ population of non-Germans.
Cutting off the food supplies to the POW camps was, as Christian Gerlach has
recently argued in his research on the fate of Belorussians, a Hungerpolitik with
genocidal intent and consequences. Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner,
who was in charge of the distribution of supplies including food rations, argued that nonworking POWs ‘‘should starve.’’ As he and the majority of the
Nazi leadership saw it, ‘‘The more prisoners that die, the better off we are.’’
Their subordinates adopted a similar attitude and implemented the policy of
starvation, inhumane neglect, and mass murder of POWs.77 Instead of planning for the proper care of POWs, the German military poured its energy into
a massive propaganda campaign to induce Soviet soldiers to desert to the German side, leaving the fate of these deserters to local army administrators and
their meager resources.78
Shortly after the Wehrmacht broke through the Stalin line at Vinnytsia and
most of the Zhytomyr region was in German hands, the Army High Command
issued an order about the ‘‘processing’’ of POWs. First of all, the directive emphasized, the German soldier must keep his distance from these dangerous
types. Any POW who attempted to flee was to be shot without warning. For
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the vast remainder, the German military established collection points, which
were also internment sites for ‘‘roaming civilians,’’ since, the Germans claimed,
‘‘most of the former soldiers disguise themselves in civilian clothes.’’ POWs in
the rear areas who did not turn themselves in to the nearest Wehrmacht post or
who tried to conceal their identity were ‘‘treated like insurgents and handled
accordingly’’—that is, shot.79
Collection points existed in each town and were the responsibility of the
corps-level officers. From the collection points dotting the landscape of the
Zhytomyr region, the POWs were taken, usually through forced marches, to
the main transit camps (Durchgangslager, Dulags) located in Zhytomyr, Berdychiv, Novohrad-Volyns’kyi (Zviahel), and Vinnytsia.80 The transit camps were
temporary collection points that fed into the stationary camps (Stammslager,
Stalags), which became permanent camps in the military rear areas and later
in the civilian zones. In the Zhytomyr region some of the larger camps were
established at Liubar, the city of Zhytomyr (Dulag  and Stalag  and ),
Berdychiv (Dulag  and a branch of Stalag ), Vinnytsia, and Haisyn (Dulag
).81 The Stalag at Vinnytsia became well known during the Nazi occupation
as the camp for ‘‘Prominente,’’ high-ranking Soviet internees who might be politically useful, such as Andrei Vlasov, who commanded a German-sponsored
Russian Liberation Army during the last stages of the war.82
Those who had been assembled in the collection points and sent on to
camps at Novohrad-Volyns’kyi, Zhytomyr, and Berdychiv were then separated
into groups, defined by race and ability to work. Army camp administrators,
Sipo-SD commandos, and their collaborators sorted the prisoners into five
groups: () ethnic Germans, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians;
() Asians, Jews, and German-speaking Russians; () commissars, agitators,
and other suspicious elements; () officers and noncommissioned officers; and
() others.83 The ethnic Germans, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians were screened by army intelligence for possible release and given special
work assignments inside and near the camps. Senior officials in the army and
SS-police determined the fate of the second and third groups during the prewar
planning and in the first months of the campaign. In the summer of , Chief
of the Security Police and SS–Security Service Reinhard Heydrich provided detailed instructions for his Einsatzgruppen leaders whose units were assigned
the task of ‘‘cleansing’’ the POW camps as well as finding potential collaborators among the prisoners; these instructions included the segregation of all
suspected Bolsheviks, Communist Party officials, and Jews.84
In the official military records, certain categories of prisoners—namely,
Jews and ‘‘Asiatics’’—appeared to have been released, but actually these prisThe Wehrmacht Administration
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oners were given over to the SD and killed.85 Hans Fruechte, a medical doctor assigned to Dulag  in the summer of , observed that from the start
Jews, Mongolians, and ‘‘other Asiatic races’’ were segregated; ‘‘in most cases
commissars had been liquidated before the prisoners arrived in the camp.’’
Fruechte and other camp personnel learned ‘‘from the soldiers who had accompanied transports to Zhitomir, that in Zhitomir at the beginning of August
, all incoming Jews who had arrived together with the prisoner transport
had been shot.’’ 86 In a December  conference, Reich labor, army, and SS
leaders discussed how those who were ‘‘segregated’’ for release were mostly
shot; in General Reinicke’s area (mainly Ukraine), of the , segregated
POWs, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller (Berlin, RSHA) reported that , had
been liquidated.87
From among those who survived the segregation process and were capable
of labor, the German military then identified the carpenters, engineers, building masters, and other specialists and assigned them to the operational areas
or to the local commanders’ offices. After the specialists were separated and
deployed, the nonskilled but ‘‘able-bodied’’ POWs were formed into companies of about  to  men who were sent on construction jobs, generally
near the camps.88
Many of these POW labor battalions received their assignments from the
Organization Todt, which was actively pulling laborers out of the POW camp
at Zhytomyr and in Vinnytsia and assigning them to road construction.89 The
biggest network of Nazi-run labor camps in the region centered on the joint
army and SS-police construction of the autobahn, planned as the major transit route for military supplies and personnel. The ‘‘Durchgangsstrassen,’’ or
highways, ran through Vinnytsia (DG IV) and Zhytomyr (DG V).90 About every
fifteen kilometers, POW labor camps for road construction workers were to be
set up along the planned routes.91 Under the direction of OT, prisoners were
worked to death hauling stones from the Hnivan’ quarry, which were used for
the roads as well as the construction of Hitler’s elaborate Werwolf field headquarters and bunker. Even after the arrival of the civilian administrators, army
village commanders remained posted along the highway and continued to manage the exploitation of POW laborers on the autobahn.92
Those who were not fit to work were marched by foot in a ‘‘relay system’’ or, if
available, by railway in open cars normally not used for transporting humans.93
Following the orders and guidelines of the High Command, staff of the Security
Divisions managed the movement of prisoners from the transit camps to the
permanent camps situated in the rear areas.94 In August the numbers of POWs
in Zhytomyr’s camps were already so high that they came close to the popula The Wehrmacht Administration
Soviet POWs handing out bread in a Vinnytsia POW camp,  July  (U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum, courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, #)
tions of the towns where the camps were situated; at Novohrad-Volyns’kyi, a
town of no more than , inhabitants, the POW transit camp (Dulag )
contained , prisoners.95 To reduce the overcrowding, the German military
forced them westward to the Shepetivka Stalag in Podolia. But after the German victory at Kiev, where about , Soviet soldiers were captured, tens of
thousands of these POWs were then transported or were forcibly marched to
the Zhytomyr camps, which—despite the August and early September deaths
and deportations of POWs—were overflowing with starved prisoners.96 Many
POWs from Kiev who were destined for Zhytomyr died in the transport. The
military’s Landesschützenverbände (defense units) shot those who collapsed
or tried to flee. As the hungry and often wounded prisoners trudged westward,
German guards goaded them like animals with whips, clubs, and pistol shots.97
In a rare report by an incensed intelligence official of Security Division ,
the author wrote that the physical condition of prisoners in Berdychiv who had
traveled from Kiev ‘‘counter the most basic notion of humanity.’’ 98
On paper, the existence of German plans to employ skilled POWs as laborers
or to form labor battalions obscures the reality that in the fall and winter of
 thousands of POWs in Zhytomyr’s camps died from starvation, shooting,
and disease. When the autumn frost set in earlier than usual, the cold weather
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took its toll on the poorly clothed and emaciated prisoners. Some resorted to
cannibalism. Camp guards treated the prisoners in ways that were not only
‘‘harsh but often unnecessarily cruel.’’ 99
By November ,  to  percent of the prisoners who arrived at the camps
were already on the verge of death from starvation and exhaustion.100 Many
thousands died alongside the roads to the camps, but these deaths were not
registered in the German reports. In mid-December Reich Minister Alfred Rosenberg reported to Hitler that about , POWs were dying each day in
Ukraine’s camps. He explained that many more would die because of malnutrition, but he reassured Hitler that the loss of life would not impair the necessary labor supply.101
For the local population, the thousands of POWs who were held in open-air
camps across the region and marched through their towns and villages became
a troubling, disheartening display of German intentions. At first, the Germans
forbade the burying of prisoners who lay dead along the roads and in plain view
of the population. Ukrainian women imagined the same fate for their fathers,
husbands, and brothers who had been drafted into the Red Army. Ukrainians
who sought work at German labor offices found themselves paired up with
POWs and formed into labor units. Seeing how poorly nourished and abused
these prisoners were, local Ukrainians began to gain a clearer sense of Nazi
methods.102
The largest and most visible POW camp near Zhytomyr was Bogun’ia, situated about five kilometers from the city. Here the German army cordoned off a
former collective farm with barbed wire and herded the POWs into an exposed
area where they were subjected to Zhytomyr’s climate of steamy summers and
bitterly cold winters (comparable in North America to the weather found in
Toronto, Canada).
At Bogun’ia the German camp commandant announced in the local paper,
Holos Volyni, that civilians should bring food and clothing packages to the prisoners between : and : .. Many Ukrainian women responded to this
call; they hoped to find their sons, brothers, or fathers among the prisoners.
Instead they discovered that they were the objects of a German ruse. The commandant collected the parcels and then handed them out to the camp guards,
not to the prisoners. At Vinnytsia the Russian mayor, Aleksandr Sevast’ianov,
announced in the paper that thousands of prisoners would march through
town and the locals should come to their aid with food. Hundreds (mainly
women and children) waited by the roadside with carts of apples and bread.
When the approaching prisoners saw the food they broke through the line of
guards to grab it. A convoy officer ordered the guards to shoot. In the chaos and
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panic that followed, POWs and civilians were shot and trampled to death.103 In
another more extreme example of maltreatment of POWs, the Sixth Army staff
doctor, Dr. Gerhart Panning, collaborated with the SKa chief, Colonel Paul
Blobel, in a murderous experiment. They tested the effect of captured Soviet
dum-dum explosives on Jewish POWs. Panning’s analysis of this experiment
and gruesome photographs of the victims were published as a research piece
in the journal Der deutsche Militärarzt in January .104
Through German practices of torture, forced labor, mass shooting, and inhumane neglect, more than , POWs died at Bogun’ia, around Berdychiv,
and in the northern districts of the Zhytomyr region.105 At the Berdychiv Camp
(Dulag ), where , prisoners were left in December  (, were
Ukrainian), the mortality rate was over  percent, and the camp’s remaining
food supply was sufficient for about eight days. On the outskirts of Berdychiv,
the German SD and local Wehrmacht units executed thousands of POWs at
Krasnaia Gora.106
This particular Nazi campaign generated some conflicts among German
military leaders in Ukraine. The more pragmatic types, who also may have
been tacitly expressing their disapproval of army ‘‘excesses,’’ complained that
the prisoners constituted a valuable labor force in industry or agriculture.107
There was also concern about seeding anti-German sentiments among the
Ukrainian population. High Command orders identified Ukrainian POWs as
a ‘‘privileged’’ group to be treated less severely than Russians.108 If a Ukrainian POW’s hometown was within a three- to four-day walk from the camp,
then the prisoner was allowed to leave for home with the proper identification and release papers. In some cases, a friend or relative from the prisoner’s
hometown would have to vouch for the prisoner’s identity. According to Karel
Berkhoff ’s research, Ukrainian women often claimed prisoners as ‘‘husbands’’
to rescue them from starvation in the camps. The Ukrainian Red Cross was
also actively pressuring local German authorities to release and care for Ukrainian POWs.109 However, before the Nazi leadership announced a formal release
policy, regional commanders had already been treating the Ukrainian POWs
more favorably by providing them with rations and recruiting them as skilled
laborers and as auxiliaries to the police forces.110
Of the , Soviet POWs released by the German military in ,
Ukrainians constituted , (, from camps under Army Group
South in Ukraine.)111 German military and police leaders perceived Ukrainians
(and Baltic peoples) to be, as a racial-political category, of a higher standing
than other ‘‘Asiatic’’ groups.112 Another important factor encouraging the release of Ukrainians (and Baltic nationals) was the presumption made by the
The Wehrmacht Administration

Germans and nurtured by émigrés that these peoples would be hostile to the
Soviet Union and therefore good collaborators. Yet these ‘‘Slavs’’ were still considered an inferior race and a potential political threat. Nazi leaders, including
Hitler, disapproved of the release of POWs. Like Hitler, Reich Commissar for
Ukraine Erich Koch protested that the freed POWs would avenge the Germans
by joining the partisans. Released POWs were also deemed a health hazard because of the possible spread of epidemics from the camps.113
In the Zhytomyr region, relations between the Army High Command and
the SS over the fate of POWs were not always smooth. The Wehrmacht had
agreed to cooperate with Heydrich’s policy of purging the POW camps by commandos of the SD, but in at least one documented incident in Vinnytsia the
army camp commandant refused to comply with the SD routine.114 He refused
to hand over  Jewish POWs and started a court-martial process against his
subordinates because they defied him by turning over the Jews to the SD. This
conflict prompted army headquarters at Vinnytsia to ban the SD from entering
the Dulag, a ban that was promptly overridden by higher levels who pressed
for better SS-army cooperation.115
The few cases in which army officials resisted Sipo-SD demands for Jewish
prisoners, expressed disgust about the ‘‘inhumane’’ condition of the POWs, or
argued that labor demands should take precedence over the genocide demonstrate that not all local military commanders approved of Nazi methods. There
may have been more expressions of disapproval that were not voiced on paper.
But most formal complaints were directed at problems of mismanagement and
general disorder. Any glimmer of uneasiness that managed to make its way up
the ranks was effectively suppressed by senior-level ‘‘assurances’’ and ‘‘explanations’’ about the German struggle against Judeo-Bolshevism. By the end of
summer , if not at the outset of the Barbarossa campaign, most local military leaders came to accept brutality and terror as part of their everyday routine
and the general atmosphere in the East.
Summing Up Colonial-Style Warfare
and Hitler’s War in Ukraine
As practices or features of war, punitive expeditions, collective reprisal measures, and intense paranoia about enemies behind the lines were not Nazi inventions. They had their historical antecedents most recently in the guerrillastyle warfare of the late nineteenth century and total warfare of World War I.
In the Franco-Prussian War, the colonial wars in Africa, and World War I, the
general staffs of the Prussian and then German Imperial Army sanctioned col
The Wehrmacht Administration
lective reprisals against civilians in France, Africa, Belgium, and Poland. In part
historians attribute these atrocious policies to the military’s reading or misreading of Clausewitz’s notion of a rapid, decisive victory through total annihilation of an enemy—the enemy being depicted as the soldier as well as the
nation that supports him.116 Unlike the British and the French, as historian
Isabel Hull has argued, the German military developed a ‘‘propensity for final,
violent solutions,’’ most markedly in the German military’s destruction of the
Herero and Nama (–) in Southwest Africa. This propensity did not fade
over time. On the contrary, for a growing number of conservative Germans it
was reaffirmed by the extreme violence of World War I and the existential crisis
that the Great War engendered.117 To what extent does Germany’s history of
colonial warfare fully explain the brutality that occurred in Hitler’s Vernichtungskrieg?
To be sure, in the general history of warfare, civilians have always been subjected to the brutality of warriors who raped, plundered, pillaged, and massacred. Yet there was something unprecedented about the Nazi case. The newly
appointed German (and Austrian) rulers over Ukraine were convinced that not
only on the front lines but especially in the rear areas army security was constantly in jeopardy. Unlike the similar paranoia found in the guerrilla warfare in
the colonies, in Ukraine and the Eastern Territories generally, German officers
and regular troops did not understand the war as an isolated regional campaign
against a particular group of ‘‘unruly natives.’’ For the Nazis, the ideological
stakes in the East were much higher. They believed that their entire existence as
a political entity (nation) and more decisively as a race hinged on the outcome
of this conflict. A German-led victory over Judeo-Bolshevism would demonstrate to the world Germany’s racial superiority and ensure the future survival
of the German Volk. War and conquest were political instruments as well as
transformative ideological experiences. Was the frontier experience a ‘‘revitalizing’’ one for ordinary Germans, as theorist Friedrich Ratzel (the man who
coined the term Lebensraum) had promised? To be sure, the initial euphoria of
victory emboldened most Germans. As well, perceptions of the conquered territory as a ‘‘Wild East’’ incited extreme lawlessness and brutality. Armed with
modern tools and the ideology of Nazi-style warfare, ordinary German soldiers and SS-policemen aggressively implemented a policy (which had been
defined by the High Command and senior Nazi leaders) to eradicate anyone
who stood in the way of a German victory, specifically ‘‘suspicious elements’’
among the Red Army prisoners, civilians, and above all within the Jewish population, the Communist Party, and the Soviet state apparatus. Local reports and
rumors stemming from the local population, which by and large was also unThe Wehrmacht Administration

sure of a Soviet defeat and expected severe Soviet reprisals, also became a significant catalyst for planning additional and more far-reaching Nazi ‘‘security’’
raids.
The indigenous population believed or at least hoped that the massive violence wrought by the German military would soon dissipate as the army moved
eastward. But this was not to be. Nazi-style warfare proved more than a limited series of military conflicts or isolated acts of frontier violence confined
to the battlefront. In Zhytomyr, Wehrmacht soldiers participated in atrocities
during the first months of Barbarossa when a German victory seemed certain.
The army’s involvement in massacres ‘‘behind the lines’’ was not caused by the
mental and physical attrition of warfare in the East; rather, it was an assertion
of Nazi power in its heyday.118
These first months of rule were chaotic. German regional leaders faced
many challenges in the field, from severe housing shortages to everyday administrative deficiencies. Many of the problems they brought upon themselves,
such as the overcrowding and atrocious conditions of the makeshift POW internment sites and the haphazard ghettos. The recognizable Nazi fanatics, like
General Walter von Reichenau, teamed up with the more numerous pragmatists who were willing to use extreme force and terror as a solution to any problems they faced in the field.119 The genocidal bloodbath that marked the onset
of German rule over Zhytomyr developed from a lethal mix of Nazi racial policies, Prusso-German militarism, and an arrogant ‘‘Final Solution’’ approach to
problem-solving and empire-building. Nowhere else was the convergence of
these historic developments more apparent than in the German response to
the so-called Jewish question.

The Wehrmacht Administration
Chapter 4 Making Genocide Possible
The Onset of the Holocaust,
July–December 1941
In 1941 I witnessed when all the Jews were gathered. Nearly
1,000 appeared with their suitcases. They were given the promise that they would go to Israel. They were deprived of all of
their things and forced to strip naked. My friend and classmate was there. His family name was Cantor. He was twelve
years old, and they shot him in the eye. My chemistry teacher,
his wife, and their two kids were also shot—the entire family.
That’s how the Jews were treated.
—Iurii Alekseevich Kiian, Zhytomyr, 1996
The Nazi mass murder of Jews began in Eastern European
towns such as Zhytomyr. Of the more than  million Jews who died in the Baltics, Ukraine, and Belorussia, the vast majority died at gunpoint. They were
not deported to distant locales; instead, they perished in or near their hometowns. Often neighbors, schoolmates, and colleagues watched as their town’s
Jewish population was marched to the killing sites. Some neighbors not only
witnessed the mass shootings but also pulled the trigger. There was nothing
impersonal about the Nazi killing process here, in contrast to the factory-style
gassing facilities of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the intimate setting of Ukraine’s
towns and shtetls, questions about the motivations of the perpetrators, the indifference or silence of bystanders, and the experiences of the victims take on
an extremely profound socio-psychological dimension. Moreover, the human
butchery that occurred in the killing fields of Zhytomyr and other parts of the
former Soviet territories shares more in common with other historical cases
of genocide that have taken place around the globe. Thus an in-depth study of
how the mass murder occurred here tells us much about the distinctive, unprecedented features of the Holocaust as well as casts light on other cases of
genocide.
From the very first days that the Nazis occupied Zhytomyr until their final
withdrawal in early , German soldiers, policemen, and administrators,
along with their non-German collaborators, relentlessly hunted down Zhyto-
myr’s Jewish men, women, and children. No other sector of the population was
singled out and destroyed with such unabashed and calculated cruelty. In fact,
according to Holocaust historian Dieter Pohl’s recent study of Ukraine, ‘‘events
in Zhytomyr show most clearly the transition from a selective policy of destruction to one of total eradication.’’ 1 The Germans did not perceive of the Jews in
colonially racist terms comparable to the Ukrainians. There was no place for
the Jews in the Nazi utopian vision of a Lebensraum; thus the Jews were denied even the lowest status of a colonial subject. In Zhytomyr the Germans and
their local collaborators killed as many as , Jews between the summer
of  and the autumn of —most of the women, children, elderly, and infirm died in August and September . The Nazi drive to annihilate the Jews
was so intense that in most cases German officials found it ‘‘not useful’’ to
establish ghettos here and in eastern Ukraine. After one year of occupation, the
general commissar of the region rushed to declare his districts ‘‘free of Jews,’’
although this was not entirely true.2
As a regional case study, Zhytomyr provides an in-depth view into the different administrative structures, personalities, and social conditions that made
the genocide possible. Given the presence of Hitler, Himmler, Göring and their
security retinues, the region also offers an unusual perspective on the interaction between the central and peripheral leaders. Nazi leaders presented their
subordinates with a broadly defined aim of a ‘‘Final Solution’’ and left it to
their underlings to adapt the policy to local conditions. The ‘‘success’’ of the
policy depended largely on the local commanders and their ability to anticipate
and meet the demands of superiors. To make their localities ‘‘free of Jews,’’
regional and district leaders had to marshal all the manpower and resources
within reach to ‘‘settle’’ this so-called racial-political problem. In short, the
driving force behind this campaign—the SS, the SD, and the police—needed
the full cooperation of other German agencies in the region and the assistance
of the local population. They received both.
Other than some familiarity with the destruction of Kiev’s Jews at Babi Yar,
most scholars and laymen know relatively little about Ukraine’s significance
in the history of the Holocaust. Given Ukraine’s prominence in the history of
Jewish life in tsarist Russia, and the fact that the loss of Jews there (.–. million) far exceeded other parts of Europe except for Poland, it is surprising that
such little attention has been paid to this area. Although Philip Friedman and
Shmuel Spector made important early contributions to this field, only recently,
with the opening of Ukraine’s archives, has more scholarly work started to appear, notably by Dieter Pohl.3 But there is much more to be done on the topics
of collaboration and resistance, and other subjects have barely been touched,
 Making Genocide Possible
such as Jewish forced labor in Ukraine. Thus with few exceptions, our knowledge of the Holocaust in Ukraine has not progressed much beyond Babi Yar,
or, at best, the summer and fall of , thereby missing important developments in –, including the involvement of German civilians outside the
SS-police forces, the various forms of Ukrainian participation, and the Nazi
use of Jewish forced labor, developments that are explored in chapter  of this
study. The present chapter—on the first phase of the Holocaust in Zhytomyr—
examines how the mass murder actually began, not as it was planned in the
meeting rooms of the Nazi leadership but as it developed in the field. What
were the radicalizing forces that made it possible? How did the Jewish population respond? And in what ways did Ukrainians participate in the Holocaust?
Recent interpretations about the onset of the Holocaust have stressed that
the apparent jump from the Nazi killing of male Jews to the destruction of entire communities manifests the outcome of a Hitler decision to pursue a genocidal course, a step that Hitler apparently took in July . The dramatic increase in the numbers of Jews killed as of August of that year is indeed startling
and indicates a change. But the source of this change is still unclear. Was a
fundamental decision taken in conjunction with Göring’s famous  July 
memo in which he commissioned Heydrich to conduct a feasibility study for
a European-wide ‘‘Final Solution’’? Was it the euphoria of empire, or as Germans at the time termed it Ostrausch (a colonizing high or intoxication with the
East), that emboldened Nazi leaders and their underlings to opt for genocide?
What conditions incited Nazi leaders in the center and periphery to intensify
their murderous campaign? Events in east-central Ukraine reveal several facets
of this historically devastating moment when Nazi genocidal intent was first
realized on the ground.4
The escalation of anti-Jewish violence reflected what Nazi leaders at the
center and periphery believed they could get away with at each stage in their
revolutionary quest for racial purity and imperial domination of Europe. After
November , Hitler and his cohorts learned from the Kristallnacht pogrom,
the euthanasia program, and then the Polish campaign how far they could go,
where they could act, and who could be relied upon for the more extreme measures. Indeed, two of the leading perpetrators in Zhytomyr, Otto Rasch and
General Walter von Reichenau, committed atrocities against Polish and Jewish
intelligentsia during Operation Tannenberg, the Nazi invasion of Poland.5
During the plans for Operation Barbarossa, Nazi leaders in the army and SSpolice continued their systematic approach by moving step by step toward ever
more radical ‘‘solutions’’ to the Jewish ‘‘problem.’’ Initially the Einsatzgruppen,
the first SS killing units to arrive in Ukraine, concentrated their intelligence,
Making Genocide Possible

police, and security sweeps against male Jews (– years of age). They considered the male Jews the most dangerous immediate threat and potential source
of resistance. Moreover, Nazi leaders assumed that the small, mobile killing
units would have neither the time nor the manpower to carry out large-scale
massacres. For the expanded killing actions, Himmler deployed additional SSpolice forces under Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich Jeckeln.6
While most leaders in Hitler and Himmler’s inner circle came to accept mass
murder as the only ‘‘solution’’ to the Jewish problem, in the field the transition
from killing male Jews to killing Jewish women and children did not occur automatically. Reich leaders and their regional deputies had to place extra pressure
on their subordinates to kill more Jews. They also had to provide the necessary manpower and matériel to do it. According to the testimony of the former
commander of Einsatzkommando  (EK), Erwin Schulz, he was summoned
in early August from Berdychiv to Zhytomyr, where his superior, Otto Rasch,
informed him that the higher-ups were displeased because the SS-police was
not acting aggressively enough against the Jews, in particular, by not killing
women and children.7 Prior to August, some individual SS-police leaders had
killed women and children, but apparently these sporadic massacres were not
sufficient to meet broader Nazi aims. The Nazis’ July and August  reports
of anti-Jewish massacres often specify precise Jewish death tolls in the hundreds and thousands, but rarely do they detail the age and gender of the Jewish
victims. Likewise, the age and gender of other victims, such as the mentally
ill and disabled, are usually not specified in the secret reports. In his postwar
testimony, Ernst Consee, who was in charge of the war diary of SKa, recalled
the ‘‘shooting of forty Jewish children, but not the details because it was an
issue that was not to be recorded in the war diary.’’ 8 When Higher SS and Police
Leader Jeckeln met with Himmler on  August , he was also urged to act
more aggressively, and to report daily about the killings. At first the reports
were written; then they were given orally.9
The dramatic increase in killing during August and September stemmed
from high-level orders to kill as many Jews as possible. But the exact origins
and precise date of this decision have not turned up in the documentary record.
Certainly Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw is correct in asserting, ‘‘No Hitler, no
Holocaust.’’ Yet rather than search for a Hitler order that may not exist, it may
be more worthwhile to reconstruct how the increase in killing actually happened on the ground, and how leaders and subordinates interacted in order
to push through a state policy of genocide.10 The remainder of this chapter
explores the ways in which regional leaders contributed to the radicalization
 Making Genocide Possible
of anti-Jewish measures, and particularly how their interaction with superiors
and exploitation of local conditions made the Holocaust possible.
The most prominent regional leaders in the  phase of the Holocaust in
Zhytomyr were General Reichenau, Higher SS and Police Leader Jeckeln, Einsatzgruppe C Commander Rasch, and SS-Colonel Paul Blobel. Between late July
and early September, the Wehrmacht advance halted before Kiev, allowing for
the accumulation of thousands of SS, Order Police, and army security personnel who were based in the region. Together they obliterated the Jewish populations of Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, and Berdychiv, pursuing a ‘‘Final Solution’’ with
unprecedented aggression and violence. After mid-August, regional army, SS,
and police leaders planned and carried out massacres with the intent of destroying entire Jewish communities, rather than the Communist Party and the
state apparatus per se.11 It was at this turning point that the Nazis’ racial aims
overtook their political goals.
From the Center to the Periphery Blobel’s
Sonderkommando 4a and Jeckeln’s SS-Policemen
The first SS unit to spearhead the drive into the region alongside the army
was an advance commando of Einsatzgruppe C, a subunit known as Sonderkommando a, which was led by SS-Colonel Paul Blobel. Additional subunits
of Einsatzgruppe C quickly followed; SKb and Einsatzkommandos  and  arrived in July and early August  and set up headquarters at Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, and Berdychiv. The Einsatzkommando staffs consisted of SD criminal investigators, Waffen-SS men, Order Police, drivers, and clerks; each commando
amounted to no more than  men.12
When the advance squad of SKa entered Zhytomyr among the First Armored Division’s tanks on  July, it immediately set about its callous routine
of securing quarters, locating the Soviet secret police archives, apprehending
Soviet functionaries, and persecuting the Jewish population. They announced
that the Jews of the city of Zhytomyr must move immediately into the historic
Jewish residences along Chudnovskaia. Less than a week later, when the rest
of the commando joined the advance squad, the ground was laid for the first
major killing action. SKa’s chief, Paul Blobel, who had on more than one occasion demanded that all members of his staff—including cooks, drivers, and
clerks—take on the role of executioner, warned that any objections to the murder would be dealt with severely. He assigned about four shooters to the first
massacre. Rumors were circulated and eventually published in the local Ukrai-
Making Genocide Possible

nian newspaper, Ukraïns’ke Slovo, that the burned buildings of Zhytomyr were
ignited by Jewish arsonists, who should be held responsible for the homelessness of Ukrainians. With their pretext in place, the German police prepared
a ‘‘retaliatory’’ campaign against the Jewish population—the execution of 
male Jews who were seized and on  July marched along the main square,
forced into trucks, and transported to the edge of the city. They were herded
into a hollow that was cut by a winding stream. A circle of Ukrainian Hilfspolizei sealed off the ravine. Groups of Jews were ordered to lie face down on
the ground and then shot in the back of the head with pistols. As compensation, the marksmen were provided with schnapps, kept in ample supply by
Blobel, who nearly fell into the stream in a drunken stupor.13
This incident was soon followed by a series of mass shootings of Zhytomyr’s Jews, bringing the total to , victims as of mid-August. Three more
‘‘actions’’ in August and early September took the lives of an additional 
Jewish males (including youths and the elderly). The massacres took place in a
wooded area about nine kilometers west of the city. In early September regional
SS-police and army leaders turned their attention to the remaining population
in the ghetto. On  September , Zhytomyr’s Feldkommandantur met with
staff of Einsatzgruppe C, and they decided ‘‘definitively and radically to liquidate the Jewish community.’’ SS and police forces, indigenous auxiliaries, and
army personnel combed every corner of the city for Jews who had not been concentrated on Chudnovskaia; they even checked the local orphanage, where as
many as eighty Jewish children were found and placed in a truck, never to be
heard from again. The final blow came in the early morning hours of  September : ‘‘Starting at : o’clock [..], the Jewish quarter was emptied
after having been surrounded and closed the previous evening by  members
of the Ukrainian militia. The transport was accomplished in  trucks, part of
which had been supplied by military headquarters and part by the city administration of Zhitomir. After the transport had been carried out and the necessary preparations made with the help of  prisoners, , Jews were registered and executed.’’ The ‘‘transport’’ refers to the movement of Jews to the
outskirts of town where prisoners had prepared a mass grave. After members
of SKa grabbed the most valuable Jewish property and currency, they gave the
remaining twenty-five to thirty tons of Jewish linens, clothing, shoes, dishes,
and other items to the Nazi Party’s ‘‘People’s Welfare Agency’’ (NSV).14 In the
rubble of the ghetto, the Germans established a prison for  Jewish laborers,
who were later killed in . Of the more than , Jews who were unable to
evacuate the city with the Red Army, fewer than twenty survived the Nazi occupation.15

Making Genocide Possible
At this time, the leader of all SS-police forces in Southern Russia was Himmler’s deputy, Higher SS and Police Leader Jeckeln. However, in the field the various SS-police units operated within a multiple command structure. The Einsatzgruppe units, such as Blobel’s SKa, received orders from Sipo-SD chief
Reinhard Heydrich (and his deputy, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller) located at
the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in Berlin. Their geographic targets and
security measures were coordinated with and supervised by regional military
and SS-police leaders such as Sixth Army general Reichenau and Higher SS
and Police Leader Jeckeln. By contrast, the much larger units of Waffen-SS and
Order Police received few direct orders from Berlin. Instead, they were under
the command of Jeckeln, Himmler’s Field Command Staff, and Field Army
headquarters.
Within this hierarchy of headquarters and field offices, the key link between
the army and SS-police in the Soviet territories (as elsewhere in Nazi-occupied
Europe) was the higher SS and police leader. Known collectively as ‘‘Little
Himmlers,’’ the higher SS and police leaders were the most senior SS-police
authorities reporting directly to Himmler. They were responsible regionally for
all SS and police tasks in the military and civilian zones, including security and
population policies such as resettlement actions, as well as the construction
and administration of concentration and labor camps. They traveled throughout the military and civilian zones and directly supervised their subordinates in
the mobile and stationary units. In short they were the intersection of the center and periphery. Jeckeln, Himmler’s choice for Southern Russia (which was
largely Ukraine) turned out to be one of the most aggressive Holocaust perpetrators in the Third Reich. After the war he did not escape the hangman’s
noose, but he did manage to slip into the margins of most scholarship on the
Holocaust.
Unlike his subordinate Otto Rasch, the chief of Einsatzgruppe C, Jeckeln
did not hold a university degree. Instead, his educational background and history with the Nazi Party was comparable to that of the other unsavory ‘‘Little
Himmlers’’—Hans-Adolf Prützmann (in Northern Russia) and Erich von dem
Bach-Zelewski (in Central Russia). After having earned the Iron Cross (second
class) as a pilot in World War I, Jeckeln spent most of the Weimar years unemployed until he found financial security from his second wife and the ‘‘career’’
possibilities that the Nazi Party and the SS offered someone of his type. The
reasons for the breakdown of his first marriage are revealing and worth briefly
recounting. Following his  marriage to Charlotte Hirsch, Jeckeln had a runin with his father-in-law who denied him a significant position in the prosperous family business. A humiliated and angry Jeckeln accused his father-in-law
Making Genocide Possible

of being a war profiteer. Such a person, Jeckeln reasoned, must have Jewish
blood in his background. He divorced his wife on the grounds of ‘‘racial contamination,’’ and a custody battle over the care of their three children ensued.16
Jeckeln joined the Nazi Party in  and the SS in . He quickly climbed
to the rank of SS-general lieutenant (SS-Gruppenführer) by the middle of 
and was named higher SS and police leader for Middle Germany in . Besides his good relations with Himmler, he had an excellent rapport with Kurt
Daluege (chief of the Order Police) and Theodore Eicke (commander of the
Waffen-SS Death’s Head Division), with whom he shared a virulent antiSemitism and extreme devotion to the SS-police. Jeckeln’s career reached its
high point in the Nazi system when, after lobbying for action in the East,
Himmler appointed him higher SS and police leader for Southern Russia. For
Jeckeln, this assignment was a great honor. He was to lay the foundation of the
Nazi empire in the East through the ethnic and political ‘‘cleansing’’ of the territory. To this end, he had at his disposal Waffen-SS, Einsatzgruppen, and at
least nine Order Police battalions. His anti-Jewish massacres in Ukraine made
the first Sipo-SD sweeps seem relatively small in scale.
Jeckeln was by no means a desk murderer. Flying from killing site to killing
site in his Storch plane, he was notorious for ‘‘getting the job done.’’ In fact the
evident Nazi leap to genocide that occurred in Ukraine was mainly his doing
and occurred while he was in the Zhytomyr region between late July and midSeptember . He was responsible for the first massacre of Jewish women
in the region. On  July Jeckeln ordered his First SS Brigade to ‘‘cleanse the
Rivne–Novohrad-Volyns’kyi stretch of Soviet stragglers of the [Red Army’s]
th Division and of other enemy groups’’; he wrote that ‘‘until now the areas
could only be superficially searched by the Wehrmacht; the villages will be
searched between the main streets, and in the villages, and we will connect with
the Ukrainian militia if on hand.’’ Consequently the First SS Brigade massacred
, Jewish men and women at Novohrad-Volyns’kyi (Zviahel) at the end of
July . Jeckeln personally supervised one mass shooting of  Jewish men
and women (sixteen to sixty years old), who were killed along the banks of the
Sluch’ River.17
By the time Jeckeln arrived in Berdychiv, known among Nazi leaders as a Jewish capital of the former Russian empire, the city’s military commander had
already overseen massacres of at least , Jews carried out by Waffen-SS (SSViking) and EK units.18 They tortured and killed the Jewish elders in the synagogue, and shot several thousand men, women, and children in the Brodetski
forest on the outskirts of town. More than , remained. Jeckeln’s first move
was the formation of a ghetto on  August. German SS-police, army person Making Genocide Possible
nel, and local auxiliary police drove thousands of Jews into, as Vasilii Grossman
described it, ‘‘ancient shacks, tiny single-storied houses, and crumbling brick
buildings. . . . Everywhere were piles of junk, garbage and manure. . . . People
lived five and six to a room.’’ This poor section of town was known as Jatki.19
But, according to Jeckeln’s plan, the Jews would stay here but briefly. The next
day Jeckeln told his men to take , Jews from the ghetto and to shoot them
in the forests nearby.20 Outside the ghetto, people could see and hear what was
happening to the Jews; most remained silent. In a memorable, courageous gesture, the bishop of the Berdychiv Cathedral, Father Nikolai, contacted the Jewish leaders in the ghetto and tried to help them, but German officials in Zhytomyr threatened the bishop, warning that if he aided the Jews then he would be
executed.21
On  September Jeckeln met with the new commander of the Order Police
for Ukraine, Otto von Oelhafen, who was flown to Berdychiv for this private
briefing. During lunch Jeckeln told him that already during that week a number of Jews had been killed.22 In fact, that week Jeckeln had personally directed
and observed the mass shooting of , Jewish men, women and children
near Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi (about  kilometers southwest of Berdychiv).
Jeckeln also instructed Oelhafen that future requests from the Security Police
to employ Order Police battalions in the executions of Jews were to be communicated orally.23 When his longtime colleague Kurt Daluege, the chief of the
Order Police, arrived in Berdychiv on  September, Jeckeln ordered the execution of , Jews, including  Jewish girls over the age of twelve. According
to Vasilii Grossman’s account, these young people had been told that they were
being sent to do agricultural work, and ended up digging their own graves at
the edge of town in the village of Khazhyn. Perhaps the timing of this massacre with Daluege’s arrival was purely coincidental. More likely, the zealous
Jeckeln sought to show his dedication to the Nazi cause. The liquidation of the
Berdychiv ghetto began about one week later, when between , and ,
Jewish men, women, and children (including the elderly and the infirm) were
forced to walk four kilometers to the town’s airfield, where they were shot in
mass graves on  and  September.24 The new ethnic German mayor of Berdychiv, a man named Reder, and his Ukrainian chief of police, named Koroliuk,
‘‘took an active part in organizing and conducting the execution.’’ 25 Units of
Jeckeln’s own Staff Company as well as Order Police Battalion  participated
in the action along with subunits of Einsatzgruppe C.
Jeckeln was not only the most influential SS leader in Ukraine at this time,
second only to Himmler, but also the source of strong regional ties that developed between the military and SS, a partnership that permeated the lowest
Making Genocide Possible

levels. Units of his Russia Regiment South routinely went on joint cleansing
operations with the Wehrmacht’s Security Divisions. Order Police Battalion 
worked with Security Division  in Berdychiv and Security Division  in
Vinnytsia. Order Police Battalion  collaborated with Security Division 
in Vinnytsia, and Order Police Battalion  with Security Division  in Zhytomyr. Meanwhile Waffen-SS Infantry Regiments  and  (the First SS Brigade)
joined forces with the Sixth Army in the northern part of the region.26
The ‘‘official task’’ of Jeckeln’s First SS Brigade was, as in the case of the
Wehrmacht Security Divisions, the suppression of pockets of Red Army resistance and partisans. Yet such ‘‘threats’’ were minimal at this stage. Instead, in
addition to apprehending POWs and liquidating Soviet functionaries and ‘‘political commissars,’’ the Waffen-SS descended on the villages of the region and
shot Jewish men and women, whom Jeckeln branded Soviet agents. In the first
two weeks of September, Higher SS and Police Leader units operating in the
northeastern sections of the region around Ovruch wrote of their ‘‘successes’’
—the ‘‘liquidation’’ of , Jews, noting that they were killed along with a few
partisans.27
The Division of Labor SS-Police and Wehrmacht
Collaboration in the Holocaust
It is generally known that collaboration between the SS, the police, and the
army was formalized in the pre-Barbarossa agreement between Sipo-SD chief
Reinhard Heydrich and Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner. The various
forms that this collaboration took once the invasion was under way are less
well known.28 SKa personnel under Blobel and officers in the Sixth Army became comrades on the front lines as well as in the rear areas during the racialpolitical cleansing of POW camps and conquered territory. They also bonded
socially during meals and late-night meetings in their quarters. Their collaboration in the executions of Jews, POWs, the mentally and physically disabled,
‘‘gypsies,’’ and other so-called undesirables was preplanned and well coordinated, but it also exhibited ad hoc, even spontaneous features that were part
of the dynamic conditions and context of war. Cross-agency collaboration developed from deliberate Nazi administrative plans that were bolstered by personal networks, military-style camaraderie in the field, and shared ideological
beliefs. Most striking is the systematic division of labor that Sipo-SD men and
military officials jointly devised in the field. It was demonstrated very clearly in
Zhytomyr’s Holocaust history, and especially on one day in early August .29
On  August the entire staff of SKa joined with the staffs of the Sixth Army
 Making Genocide Possible
and of Zhytomyr’s Rear Area Field Command Post in the planning, staging, and
implementation of a public execution in Zhytomyr’s marketplace, followed by
the shooting of  male Jews on the town’s outskirts.30 The incident began
when members of SKa arrested two Jewish men from Cherniakhiv (twenty-five
kilometers north of Zhytomyr). According to the German reports, the villagers
had accused the two men, Wolf Kieper and Moishe Kogan, of being ‘‘bloodthirsty agents of the NKVD.’’ 31 After extracting a ‘‘confession’’ from them,
security police commanders from SKa brought Kieper and Kogan to Zhytomyr. Meanwhile, the Wehrmacht’s city commander at Zhytomyr, Colonel Josef
Riedl, supervised a brutal ‘‘round-up’’ of about  of Zhytomyr’s Jews (including many elderly men), who were escorted to the marketplace and guarded by
the military field police and indigenous auxiliaries.
The Wehrmacht Propaganda Unit  drove through the city with a loudspeaker announcing in Ukrainian and German that a public execution would
be held in the marketplace, where the Germans had erected a gallows.32 Under
the two dangling nooses of the gallows stood a truck that served, at first, as
a stage. SD commandos led Kieper and Kogan to this platform, which was already prepared with posters written in German and Ukrainian: ‘‘The Cheka Jew
Wolf Kieper, the Murderer of , Ethnic Germans and Ukrainians’’ and ‘‘The
Aide to the Jewish Cheka, the Executioner Moishe Kogan.’’ In a rallying cry to
the hundreds of curious and cheering onlookers, SS Hauptsturmführer Albert
Müller asked aloud in Ukrainian, ‘‘With whom do you have to settle a score?’’
‘‘With one or another Jew,’’ the crowd replied. At which point, some of the 
gathered Jewish men were beaten with clubs, kicked, and mishandled for about
forty-five minutes. Behind the gallows, Wehrmacht soldiers sat perched on the
roof of a small building; some looked on pensively while others casually observed the scene like any recreation on a day off. According to one eyewitness
account, the crowds cheered as the truck drove forward and ‘‘Ukrainian women
held their children up high.’’ Infantrymen hollered, ‘‘Slowly, slowly so we can
get a better photograph.’’ 33 After Kieper and Kogan were killed, German guards
drove the  Jewish men to a prepared shooting site outside of Zhytomyr (the
Horse Cemetery).34
At the cemetery Germans and their Ukrainian auxiliaries forced between ten
and twelve Jews to line up facing the firing squad, a platoon of Waffen-SS men
who shot them with rifles. But according to the SS and army participants, this
method was ineffective; not every victim who fell into the pit was dead. So an
impromptu meeting was held between members of SKa (including Paul Blobel) and two officials of the Sixth Army, a judge named Dr. Arthur Neumann
and a doctor named Dr. Gerhart Panning. It was decided that each victim be
Making Genocide Possible

SD officers prepare to hang Moishe Kogan (left) and Wolf Kieper on the market square in Zhytomyr,
 August  (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Zydowski Instytut Historyczny
Instytut Naukowo-Badawczy, #)
Image rights unavailable
Jews rounded up by the Wehrmacht and Sipo-SD in Zhytomyr watch the hanging of Moishe Kogan
and Wolf Kieper on the market square,  August  (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,
courtesy of Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, #)
first shot in the head, but then this approach also proved inadequate because it
was too ‘‘messy’’—the brains of the victims were spraying the killers.35 According to another account of this shooting, two Wehrmacht officers, an officer of
the Luftwaffe, and SS officers observed, while SD and Order Police units fired
rifle shots from a distance of about six meters to the victims who sat facing
the pit. The army doctor and SS officials looked into the pit to make sure all
were dead. As many as  percent were not; but the executions continued, and
many of the half-dead victims were covered with more bodies and soil. Later
that evening the SS-police and army officials convened again to discuss the way
the mass killing was to be done; at least one person present complained that
it was ‘‘intolerable for both victims and firing squad members.’’ 36
Collaboration between the army and SD was demonstrated again in Zhytomyr when Blobel and army officials experimented with explosives as an alternative to shooting. In August  the senior staff doctor with the Sixth Army,
Dr. Panning, approached Blobel with a special request. During the time that
the Sixth Army had been stationed in Zhytomyr (if not earlier at Luts’k), close
relations had developed between SKa and members of the army medical staff.
Blobel and some of his fellow killers sought medical attention from the staff.
They received injections to calm their nerves after the massacres. Panning, who
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
had learned about the German capture of certain Russian explosives (dum-dum
bullets) was investigating the possible injuries German soldiers might suffer
from this illegal ammunition. To determine the possible effects of the Soviet
ammunition on German soldiers, Panning decided that the explosives should
be tested on live humans. Panning asked Blobel for some ‘‘guinea pigs.’’ They
agreed to use POWs, probably Jews pulled out of the camps by Blobel’s units.37
Oberstabsarzt Panning did not have the official authorization to order Blobel’s men to carry out this murderous experiment, yet Blobel was willing to
oblige. The experiment offered Blobel the possibility of advancing the implementation of the ‘‘Final Solution,’’ and of maintaining ‘‘smooth’’ relations with
the Wehrmacht. Additionally, Blobel handpicked certain men for this gruesome
job so that they would become the increasingly hardened killers that he needed
to carry out the genocide. Panning, on the other hand, acted under the guise
of conducting medical research. In fact, Panning’s local reputation as a ‘‘researcher’’ spread to Berlin a few weeks later. On  September Helmuth James
von Moltke, the Abwehr’s international law expert and later a central figure in
the resistance group known as the Kreisau circle, wrote to his wife about Panning’s experiments, stressing that the incident was ‘‘the height of bestiality
and depravity and there is nothing one can do.’’ 38
The Blobel-Panning collaboration reveals several facets of the implementation of the ‘‘Final Solution’’ under the military administration. In particular,
their partnership demonstrates how the otherwise independent interests of
two agencies converged around the Holocaust. On the face of it, such cooperation between a killing commando chief and a doctor from the Prussian military establishment seems rather odd. Blobel was a notoriously well-connected
Nazi and vicious anti-Semite. He was an SD careerist who demanded that all
of his underlings bloody their hands in the murder. His superiors praised his
total loyalty and reliability. In fact Himmler later recognized Blobel by granting him the task of covering up the genocide as head of the top-secret Sonderkommando . Yet Blobel, who was also known for choleric outbursts, held
a degree in architecture from one of the best art schools in Germany. In other
words, he was not only, as his personnel file stated, a ‘‘geborner Kriminalist’’
(born detective) ‘‘von unbedingter Zuverlässigkeit’’ (of unconditional loyalty)
but also a technically minded architect, ‘‘very predisposed to the practical.’’
Thus Blobel appreciated pragmatic solutions, and in this regard he saw eye to
eye with the senior staff doctor Panning, who was director of the Forensics
Military Institute in the Military Medical Academy in Berlin. Panning was part
of a new generation of medical experts who applied their forensics research to
the state’s ‘‘crime-fighting’’ apparatus. Basically unrestrained by institutional

Making Genocide Possible
and legal structures, Blobel and Panning were free to ‘‘refine’’ killing methods
and to conduct heinous experiments with Jewish ‘‘guinea pigs.’’ 39
As these incidents show, the desire at the lower levels to further Nazi execution methods was a joint army/SS-police endeavor that took on various forms.40
In the mass shootings that followed the Kieper-Kogan hangings, and in experiments with explosives on POWs, officials from the two agencies sought to
‘‘refine’’ the killing process and demonstrated their inhumane regard for efficiency. In many other cases of ‘‘on the spot’’ collaboration, SS-police and military personnel devised sadistic amusements. For example, at Tul’chyn in August , an SS commando and the local Ortskommandantur forced elderly
and infirm Jews to gather in the marketplace. They were made to stand and hop
on one leg. At Khmil’nyk the Germans cut the beards of the elderly Jewish men
and then forced their grandsons and other Jewish youth to eat the hair. Jews
were also brought to the destroyed glass factory and made to dance barefoot
on shards of glass.41 In addition to devising a ‘‘reibungslos’’ division of labor
for carrying out large-scale massacres, army and SS personnel initiated such
torture, stripping the Jews of their dignity in their last moments of life.42
Rationalizing, Legitimizing, or Resisting the Mass Murder
There is scant evidence of lower-level German officials in the military and
SS-police who resisted outright the order to kill Jews. Instead, there were some
individuals, including Otto Rasch, the seasoned killer and head of Einsatzgruppe C, who voiced concern about the economic results and political backlashes of the policy. In an ‘‘Event Report’’ of  September , he made some
relatively bold statements about where the genocidal policy was headed:
Even if it were possible to carry out the immediate,  percent elimination
of the Jews, with that we would still not have done away with the hotbed
of political danger. The work of Bolshevism is supported by Jews, Russians,
Georgians, Armenians, Poles, Latvians, Ukrainians; the Bolshevik apparatus
is in no way identical with the Jewish population. In this state of affairs, the
aim of political and police security would be missed, if the main task of the
destruction of the communist apparatus were relegated to second or third
place in favor of the practically easier task of eliminating the Jews. Concentrating on the Bolshevik functionary robs Jewry of its most able forces, so
that the solution of the Jewish problem becomes more and more a problem
of organization.
In western and central Ukraine, Jewry is almost exclusively identical with
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
urban workers, artisans, and the merchant class. If the Jewish labor force is entirely done away with, then an economic reconstruction of Ukrainian industry as well
as the development of the urban administrative centers will be almost impossible.
There is only one possibility, which the German administration in the
General Government has neglected for a long time:
Solution of the Jewish Question through the extensive labor utilization of the Jews.
This will result in a gradual liquidation of Jewry—a development that corresponds to the economic conditions of the country.43
In September , SS-Brigadeführer Rasch (like his counterpart in Belorussia, Einsatzgruppe B leader Arthur Nebe) stood at the crossroads of his career
in the Nazi system. Rasch, who was born in East Prussia in , spent most
of his years in battle on Germany’s eastern frontiers. In World War I he fought
against Polish nationalist groups as a member of the th Border Guard Regiment, and continued to fight following the war as a member of the Von Löwenfeld Freikorps. After earning doctoral degrees in law and political economy,
Rasch joined the Nazi Party in , the SS in , and the SD in . He enjoyed a swift ascent up the SS-police hierarchy, first as chief of the Gestapo in
Frankfurt am Main, then as inspector of the Security Police for Upper Austria,
and thereafter as chief of the SD office in Prague. In the Polish campaign of
September–October , Rasch served as commander of the Security Police
of a special Einsatzgruppe tasked with the eradication of Polish and Jewish
intelligentsia.44 By  he earned the rank of SS-Brigadeführer. According to
Rasch’s postwar testimony, he hoped that after ‘‘paying his dues’’ in the Barbarossa campaign he would land a nice sinecure in Berlin’s RSHA. Instead, as he
claimed in the dock at Nuremberg, he was called back to Berlin because of conflicts with Himmler and Erich Koch, the Reich commissar for Ukraine. As of
October , his career in the RSHA effectively ended. Rasch assumed the unlikely position of manager in the Continental Oil Company until the conclusion
of the war. The reasons for his career shift remain murky. However, his critical
statements in the widely circulated ‘‘Event Report’’ quoted above are revealing
for other reasons. Rasch, who was fifty years old in , and thus older than
most of his counterparts and superiors in the SS-police, apparently felt confident enough in his position to criticize state policy. At the same time he carried
out his orders to kill as many Jews as possible in a thorough manner. Indeed,
he placed extra pressure on his subordinates to comply with the leadership’s
demand to step up the killing. Yet even as he held the critical middleman role
of enforcing a genocidal ‘‘Final Solution,’’ Rasch argued that the total destruction of the Jews was not the best way to stamp out Bolshevism.
 Making Genocide Possible
Rasch’s subordinate, SS-Standartenführer Erwin Schulz, who was the oldest
of the Einsatzkommando chiefs, also expressed some ambivalence about killing all Jews. Schulz (b. ) had a long career in the Schutzpolizei (he joined
in ) and then switched to intelligence and political police work in . He
detested communism and believed that the Jews were to blame for Bolshevism.
When Rasch pressured him to kill more women and children in early August
, Schulz claimed after the war that he did not want to carry out this order
because the massacres were dreadful for his men. Schulz sent a letter to Bruno
Streckenbach, who was the Sipo-SD chief in charge of personnel matters in
Berlin, requesting that he be called back from the front. Schulz left Zhytomyr at
the end of August. This move did not damage his career. In fact, by November
 he was considered competent enough to teach a training course for Gestapo and SD-chiefs being posted abroad. The subject of his course was ‘‘Die
Haltung eines SS-Mannes’’ (the attitude of an SS man). Moreover, on  November  Schulz was promoted to the rank of SS-Oberführer for his ‘‘besonderer
Verdienste im Einsatz’’ (special service in action).45
Neither the outspoken Rasch nor his less prominent colleagues disputed the
genocide on moral grounds. Instead, even the loudest critics of Reich policy
maintained a pragmatic stance, warning about the immediate negative economic and political repercussions of the Jewish losses. The men in the field
such as Schulz and even Himmler observed that members of the shooting
squads experienced psychological trauma. Yet Rasch articulated what most
were unwilling to see or openly admit to, namely, that the Jews, women and
children in particular, were in no way to be identified exclusively with Bolshevism. As he observed, most of his colleagues pursued the ‘‘easier’’ task of total
destruction of the Jewish community rather than deal with the intricacies of
rooting out Bolshevism across the multiethnic Soviet society and state apparatus. Rasch was not the only senior SD official to express some skepticism at
this juncture in Nazi anti-Jewish policy. Like Erwin Schulz, Einsatzgruppe B
chief Arthur Nebe also voiced his concerns, and he was not penalized for his
outspokenness.46 Some, such as Rasch, Nebe, and Schulz, may have secretly
or openly questioned the policy, but they did nothing to slow or obstruct the
killing. Shortly after Rasch wrote his mid-September critique, he and his colleagues planned for the destruction of Kiev’s Jews at Babi Yar.47
As of the summer of , a growing number of SS-policemen and other
German personnel in the field found themselves cast in the role of executioner or of accomplice to mass murder. They adapted to the role, in large part
by allocating certain ‘‘unpleasant’’ tasks to non-Germans and by ‘‘improving’’
their mass-shooting methods, which in turn enabled them to expand the killMaking Genocide Possible

ing. SKa executioners such as subunit leader Heinrich Huhn, who joined the
Ukrainian militiamen in the killing of the children at Radomyshyl’, recounted
after the war that at the ghetto liquidation at Zhytomyr (which occurred almost
two weeks after the Radomyshyl’ incident) the women were allowed to hold
their children in their arms (‘‘Die Frauen durften ihre Kinder auf den Armen
halten’’).48 Huhn and his colleagues believed that this was a more efficient and
even ‘‘humane’’ approach. Thus with each killing action, regional officials in
the army and SS-police advanced their genocidal methods and overcame organizational and psychological conflicts with the full support of their superiors.
Even those who argued for the more economical approach of excusing Jewish
laborers from the mass shootings were not trying to stem the violence against
women, children, the elderly, and the infirm. The labor rationale for keeping
some able-bodied Jews alive was accepted because it was still based on a common understanding that the Jews would die anyway. Besides more efficient
shooting methods and forced labor, another Nazi strategy for carrying out the
Holocaust crystallized in the summer of : ghettoization.
Facilitating Genocide Ghettos in Zhytomyr
In the pre-Barbarossa guidelines for ruling the conquered territory, German
military and SS-police leaders did not plan for the establishment of ghettos.
In Roques’s Army Group South Rear Area Administration, the regional Kommandanturen (commanders) concentrated on four tasks related to the Jewish
question: () confiscation of Jewish property, () marking of Jews, () exploitation of Jewish labor, and ) registration and listing of the Jewish population. The formation of ghettos is noticeably absent from this official list.49 Indeed, one of the few pre-Barbarossa references to ghettos appeared in a May
 memorandum by the Reich minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories,
Alfred Rosenberg, who advised his Ukrainian deputy that ‘‘after the customary
removal of Jews from all public offices, the ‘Jewish Question’ must undergo
a decisive solution through the establishment of ghettos or labor battalions.’’
Rosenberg, who was not at the forefront of Nazi anti-Jewish policy-making and
implementation in , assumed that the same pattern of destruction in Poland would be applied to Ukraine, and that ghettoization would occur in the
civilian administered zones, not in the military ones.50
From the Nazi point of view, the region’s high concentration of Jews in the
major towns and on Jewish collective farms, such as the Romanov Settlement
of about , Jews in Dzerzhyns’k, actually ‘‘facilitated’’ the German goal of a
rapid destruction of all Jewish communities. Even in the open countryside the
 Making Genocide Possible
Jews felt trapped, being surrounded by hostile neighbors. According to a Jewish
survivor, Michael Rozenberg, his friends and family tried to flee on foot from
the Nazis, but they could not find hiding places in the open fields and lacked
means of transportation.51 The Goykher family from the vicinity of Vinnytsia
trudged eastward with the Soviet army but soon the German army overtook
them and forced them into a schoolhouse with the rest of Illintsi’s Jews.52
The Nazis’ use of schools and other makeshift sites to confine Jews marked
a major shift in their ghettoization practices. In general, regional leaders found
that the formation of ghettos along the Polish model was neither necessary
nor useful. During the first weeks and months of the occupation, both military and SS-police officials utilized the term ‘‘ghetto’’ mainly as a ruse for assembling the population shortly before it would be murdered. Describing the
SS approach in the Zhytomyr region, Rasch related how the conditions of the
population were connected to the Jews’ fate in a curious way. On  September he reported that ‘‘the procedure against the Jews is necessarily different in
the individual sectors, according to the density of their settlement. . . . In the
northern sector a great many Jewish refugees have returned to the villages. . . .
[There is no food or shelter for them.] . . . The danger of epidemics has thus increased considerably. For that reason alone, a thorough clean-up of the respective places became necessary.’’ At Radomyshyl’ the SD crowded the Jews from
the outlying areas into an old school; they began to die of hunger and disease.
According to the Einsatzgruppe C chief ’s ‘‘official’’ reasoning, given that conditions were so bad and the Germans could not supply them with food, ,
Jews were therefore killed by the SKa and Ukrainian militia. In this and other
top-secret SD reports, Rasch ‘‘explained’’ that large concentrations of Jews engendered problems of sanitation, housing, and epidemics, so the population
‘‘had’’ to be eliminated. While that was Rasch’s formal rationale for destroying entire communities, the Germans in fact confined the Jews to sites without
care or provisions until the date of the mass shooting could be arranged.53
General Commissar Klemm’s driver observed in his travels during  and
 that there were no closed ghettos in Zhytomyr akin to those found at Cracow and Warsaw.54 The Polish ‘‘model,’’ which was the common Nazi point of
reference, contained some historically familiar features—such as some degree
of independent Jewish life evident in a Jewish Council, Jewish police forces,
sociocultural institutions, economic activity, and relatively intact family households. During the late summer and fall of , the Nazis avoided the formation
of Jewish ghettos, either because they lacked the resources to establish them
or they found that the genocide had turned ghettos into obsolete or, as they
put it, ‘‘unnecessary’’ structures. The commander of the Rear Army Group Area
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
South, Karl von Roques, had ordered at the end of August  that the establishment of ghettos in heavily Jewish-populated towns should be pursued only
when necessary or at least ‘‘useful.’’ 55 In his guidelines for administering the
region, Koch stated that in villages with fewer than  Jews, no ghetto should
be formed.56 In the bordering town of Bar in Podil’ia, which was over  percent Jewish, the term ‘‘ghetto’’ was used in the public order for Jews to gather,
but a ghetto was not formed. On  December the local Ukrainian administration ordered that the Jews of Bar report to three separate locations within five
days. Of the three locales one housed craftsmen only, whereas the other two
sites housed the elderly, women, and children, who were deemed ‘‘useless’’ and
therefore annihilated.57
As elsewhere, at Voronovytsia, in the Nemyriv district, ghettos were absent
from the killing process. The Germans gathered  Jewish men, women and
children, and then twenty-five Jews were selected as laborers; the rest were
placed in an abandoned building for a day or two while the execution site was
prepared. The remaining  Jews were brought to a pit by EK on  November  and shot.58 At Cherniakhiv Jewish families were crammed into a
freight car shortly before they were gunned down. In Vinnytsia the much larger
population was confined to a bombed-out factory. In Berdychiv, the ghetto
existed for less than a month. Jewish workers and their families who survived
the September–October massacres were imprisoned in a Carmelite monastery,
where they were tortured and killed; the few hundred who survived were then
transferred to a labor camp.59 And at Koziatyn the Germans placed the Jews in
barracks and after killing the Jews turned the barracks into a ‘‘workers educational camp.’’
Thus, instead of being domiciled in ghettos, Jews across the region’s villages
and towns were crammed into barns, schools, and freight cars or restricted to
other areas for brief periods, while SS, military, and civil leaders determined
how many marksmen would be needed, identified a killing site, obtained possible truck transport to the site, and prepared the pits.60 Military and SS-police
leaders concentrated the Jews into camps and other locales with the intent
of creating unlivable conditions for them, to isolate and therefore weaken the
Jewish population, to better organize the population for forced labor, and to
acquire better housing for German personnel. Yet all of these short-term remedies were pursued with the understanding that the entire Jewish population
was dispensable, hence the massive loss of life that often accompanied the relocation.
In the rural areas with Jewish populations that did not exceed  persons,
the military and SS-police commanders found alternative methods for con Making Genocide Possible
trolling the population. They pursued a series of anti-Jewish measures that
amounted to, in Shmuel Spector’s words, ‘‘ghettoization de facto.’’ After registering the population, the local village Kommandantur ordered the Jews to
move away from the main streets and to the back streets. Jews could not relocate to another residence or leave the village without permission. They were
not allowed on the streets except when going to and from the workplace. Unlike
the rest of the indigenous population, the Jews were banned from the marketplace for most of the day. They had to register their property, businesses, and
financial assets. They were forced to wear a white Star of David or an armband
as a prominent, humiliating label of their ‘‘pariah’’ status, which further alienated them from the Ukrainians. Such restrictions coupled with the unpredictable Nazi assaults against Jews created a life-threatening atmosphere that discouraged most Jews from leaving their homes at all.61
Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the genocidal approach to ghettoization was also
applied to Western European Jewry. At the Lodz, Riga, and Minsk ghettos, for
example, German Jewish deportees stayed briefly before being shot or gassed.
Koch and Higher SS and Police Leader Hans-Adolf Prützmann (Jeckeln’s successor) considered Ukraine as a possible dumping ground for Europe’s Jews.
In a joint memorandum of  January , Koch and Prützmann stated that
the policy for establishing ghettos was still not defined, but they asked the regional commissars as well as the SS-policemen to identify possible future ghettos near railway links where Reich Jews could be brought.62 As it turned out,
Reich Jews were not deported to Ukraine, but the Koch-Prützmann memo reveals that by late  or early  ghettos in Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe had been transformed into something unprecedented in Europe’s
long history of anti-Judaism. Under the Nazis ghettos became transit centers
and holding ‘‘pens’’ for facilitating the mass murder.63
The  period was essentially a combined SS and military assault against
the Jews who were within reach along the major transit routes and in the larger
towns of the region. As of August, the number of SS and SD forces around
Zhytomyr, Berdychiv, and Vinnytsia under the command of the higher SS and
police leader and the army had reached nearly , men. This figure does not
include thousands of police in the military’s Feldgendarmerie (military police),
Geheime Feldpolizei (army secret field police), and Ukrainian militia as well as
the sharpshooters and infantrymen of the regular army troops, who also became involved in anti-Jewish manhunts and massacres.64
In Zhytomyr and the neighboring district of Cherniakhiv, SD officials reported a few instances of Jewish resistance. Jews had attacked Ukrainian militiamen and had also established an underground operation of printing false
Making Genocide Possible

identifications.65 Near Novohrad-Volyns’kyi a small group of about five Jews,
male and female, managed to escape the shooting actions there and later joined
the Soviet partisan movement, carrying out acts of sabotage and terror against
the German administration. Jews also joined the communist resistance movement in Vinnytsia. However, these brave Jewish acts of resistance were no
match for the enormous power of German and non-German anti-Semitic forces
in the region. Thus there was an accumulation of ‘‘security’’ units in August
and September that created a possibility—or, as some German officials saw it,
the ‘‘opportunity’’—for large-scale killing actions against entire Jewish communities.
Interethnic Relations and the Holocaust
Ukrainians, Ethnic Germans, and Jews
The majority of Ukrainians sought to preserve their own livelihood, which,
from the perspective of the peasants, was continually being threatened by outside forces. However, among the thousands of Ukrainians who did work in
the German administration—that is, the mayors, collective farm supervisors,
postal workers, messengers, and clerks—a minority, albeit an influential one,
did systematically hunt and brutalize the Jews: the Ukrainian police. As historian John Paul Himka has recently argued in his work on Ukrainian collaboration in the Holocaust, ‘‘In normal historical situations, active sadists would be
marginalized as criminal elements and latent ones would not become active.
. . . But during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, criminality moved from the
margins of society to its center, and individuals with an inclination to rob, extort, and kill were not lost in the larger crowd of humanity, but rather stepped
to the fore.’’ 66 While the Germans did not tolerate Ukrainian criminal activities outside the administration, they did try to mold some of the more unsavory
types into obedient policemen by recruiting them for police training programs
in the region.
Not surprisingly, the clearest case of a Ukrainian role in the ‘‘Final Solution’’
can be found among the German records of their Ukrainian auxiliary police
units. Himmler realized that his security goals exceeded German manpower
and introduced in one of his first decrees as the chief of SS and police forces in
the East a plan for employing non-German auxiliaries, Schutzmannschaften.67
According to Himmler’s July  order, these police collaborators were chosen
from the local militias that had sprung up under the military occupation and
from the screening of acceptable racial groups among the POWs, first and foremost the Volksdeutsche and then the Ukrainians.68

Making Genocide Possible
German military commanders and officers of the SD commandos used these
Ukrainians (and ethnic Germans) in a number of so-called security tasks, including the identification of the Jews from among the local population and
subsequent anti-Jewish measures. For example, in Shpykiv, south of Vinnytsia on the Romanian border (the Bug River), the very first order issued by the
Ukrainian commander of the ‘‘Ukrainian National People’s Militia’’ (who wore
the nationalist trident on his uniform) was that all Jews over seven years of age
must wear the white star. Forcing the Jews to wear the white star was one of
the persecutory measures spelled out in the German Ortskommandanturen’s
guidelines issued from Berlin.69
Although German leaders found a sufficient number of Ukrainian volunteers to carry out their anti-Jewish measures, pogroms were not widespread in
the Zhytomyr region, to the disappointment of SD officials. According to the
Einsatzgruppe C reports from August and early September , ‘‘Almost nowhere could the population be induced to take active steps against the Jews.’’ 70
In order to involve the people in the action against Jews, the Jews were first
marched through town, and members of the Ukrainian militia were assigned
to the executions. So the Einsatzkommando and Sonderkommando leaders
thought up ways to provoke pogroms, and the Ukrainian militia helped the
Germans foment the violence by publicly seizing, beating, and even murdering Jews. Jewish survivors and contemporary German reports concur that when
pogroms did occur in the region, they broke out after the German army or SS
arrived. At Bilopil’e, near the railway juncture of Koziatyn, Jewish survivor Nina
Borisovna Glozman lost her father when Ukrainians beat him to death in a pogrom at the beginning of September, one month after the German army arrived
there.71 In a village near the city of Zhytomyr, members of SKa discovered the
mutilated remains of Ukrainians and others who had allegedly been massacred
during the Soviet retreat; the German police publicly blamed the local Jews
for the atrocities, sparking a pogrom that was followed by a German ‘‘action’’
of mass shootings.72 In a village near Chudniv, the Jewish survivor Galina Efimovna Pekerman recalled, the Germans arrived at the end of July and enlisted
local Ukrainians to massacre first the Jewish children of the village and then
the rest of the Jews (about  persons), who were seized and gunned down at
the local park.73 In general, German officials instigated the pogroms, but they
preferred not to bloody their own hands since local militiamen (Ukrainian and
ethnic German), anti-Semites, and plunderers were so obliging.74
Most Ukrainians viewed these collaborators with suspicion because of their
excessive brutality. Next to the stiffly uniformed Nazi secret police, who were
assumed to be ‘‘cultured,’’ the rather ragged local thugs in many ways posed a
Making Genocide Possible

greater threat to the local population; they could identify individual Jews and
carry out personal vendettas with force. In some cases the Germans found that
the Ukrainian militia acted against German interests.75 In the city of Zhytomyr
in , the Germans hanged a Russian named Briukhanov because his sadistic
attacks against the Jews and others in the population could not be contained.
The Germans needed help from the indigenous population, but they also expected obedience and a controllable level of mass violence. Heydrich, Rosenberg, and other Nazi leaders had instructed their subordinates in the field to
allow and even incite pogroms, but the massacres, they stressed, must not spiral into the kind of social chaos that Germans associated with the ‘‘less’’ civilized peoples of Ukraine. Applying whatever resources were available to them,
German leaders in Zhytomyr pursued the ‘‘Final Solution’’ in an atmosphere of
expediency and with a constant regard for order and efficiency.
Local police and civil commissars relied on the Ukrainians to assist them
with nearly every step of the ‘‘Final Solution’’ leading up to the point of execution. They needed the locals to identify the Jewish population, to distribute
the armbands, to collect special anti-Jewish taxes, and then to go from house
to house, seize the identified Jews, guard them, escort them to their execution,
and beat any who tried to resist.76
Several thousand Ukrainians in Zhytomyr’s German administration (largely
in the police) carried out anti-Jewish measures under the watchful eye of their
German supervisors. There were also cases in which Ukrainians in and outside
the administration came willingly to the Germans and denounced Jews, whose
fate no one could doubt after the summer of . As more than one of Zhytomyr’s Jewish survivors remarked, for every one Ukrainian who helped a Jew,
there were many more who denounced Jews to the Germans. Nina Glozman
and her younger brother survived the Holocaust in hiding—not in one place
but in many different locations. As Glozman described it after the war:
My mother, my younger brother, and I managed to escape the death pits. We
hid in a small village near our hometown until a policeman recognized us.
He took us to Koziatyn, since there were no German killing squads in Bilopil’e. We had to stay in the ghetto, chopping wood, cleaning toilets. When
the ghetto was liquidated we were able to run to Berdychiv where we hid
with another Jewish family. But that was not safe so we ran to Ruzhyn and
hid in a barn. After some time there, we heard shots so we fled again this
time to the small village of Sestrinaka. It was early . One man named
Semen Tkatchuk hid us for two months; he was alone because his son had
just been hanged as a partisan the month before we arrived. But someone
 Making Genocide Possible
in the village betrayed us. My mother was arrested and killed. Semen helped
my younger brother and me escape from the village. Later we found an abandoned house. My brother and I found work. I was working in a sugar factory
one day when the Germans came in and their interpreter turned out to be
my former classmate. She recognized me and immediately denounced me.
With the help of an engineer in the factory, I fled through the back door.77
Glozman was first betrayed by a local non-German policeman, rescued by a
grieving perhaps vengeful father whose son had been brutally murdered by
the Nazis, and then denounced again by a former classmate. Glozman and
her younger brother narrowly escaped death on several occasions, and their
lives were largely in the hands of local non-Jews. Her odyssey helps to explain
why the few Jews who managed to escape the German killing actions of 
ultimately did not survive the occupation; more often than not the individual
choice of a non-Jew who also lived under extreme, life-threatening conditions
determined a Jew’s chances of survival. The Germans tended not to write up
extensive reports about non-Jews who helped Jews. Instead, German officials
in the Zhytomyr region, who may have been seeking some ideological affirmation from the local population, did report that both the ethnic Germans and
Ukrainians vilified the Jews, calling them agents of Satan. Upon the massacre
of the Jews in Khmil’nyk, German observers noted, Ukrainians held a church
service to thank God for the removal of the Jews. As prevalent as anti-Judaism
was, however, there were additional motives that drove Ukrainians and other
locals to attack or denounce their Jewish neighbors.78
One particular case illustrates the role that interethnic strife played in furthering German anti-Semitic policies in Zhytomyr. In December  the SD
and civil administration began to formally develop the Ukrainian police from
among the existing militia and new recruits. In the process, the Germans released many militiamen whom they considered unqualified to serve or, if the
men were associated with the Ukrainian nationalist movement, a possible
threat to German rule. One of the Ukrainian militiamen who lost his job at this
time was Mark Koval’s’kyi. Koval’s’kyi was not a Ukrainian nationalist activist, so he was evidently released for other reasons, which are not altogether
clear. In any case, Koval’s’kyi was not pleased and promptly went to the local
SD office to denounce his former colleagues in the police administration. First
Koval’s’kyi claimed that the wife of the Ukrainian examining judge, Kersh, was
a Jew who held false ID papers. Then he identified Ukrainian nationalists in
the administration and told of Ukrainian policemen who secretly traded seized
Jewish property, including a Jewish leather coat valued at , rubles. The SD
Making Genocide Possible

investigated his allegations by interrogating staff of the police administration
as well as friends and neighbors of the accused. One of the Ukrainian witnesses testified that the judge, Kersh, had helped a Jewish man (named Fatzstein) by having him released from police custody. The witness generously provided Fatzstein’s address— Dmitrii Street. In addition, this witness argued,
Kersh’s Ukrainian adjutant (named Sherei) employed a Jewish tailor, whom he
had placed in the militia with false identification papers.79 Another disgruntled
ex-militiaman also testified that the chief of the Ukrainian Police Department,
the ethnic German Alexander Kulitzki, concealed Jews in the administration.
As he put it, Kulitzki fired Ukrainians from the militia and replaced them with
‘‘communists and Jews.’’
After numerous interrogations, the Sipo-SD arrested the Ukrainian judge
Sherei, the ethnic German police chief Kulitzki, and their alleged Jewish coconspirators.80 In a desperate appeal to the Germans, Sherei pleaded that he faithfully carried out their orders to ‘‘clean up Zhytomyr from its dirty elements.’’
But the SD did not release Sherei or the arrested Jews. Of all those under investigation, only the ethnic German Kulitzki was spared and continued to work
as a district police chief in Zhytomyr.81
This incident demonstrates how Ukrainians and ethnic Germans exploited
Nazi anti-Semitism as well as their own prejudices to curry favor with the Nazis,
improve their own conditions, and settle scores with foes. Ukrainians and ethnic Germans competed for coveted positions within the Nazi administration,
and they quickly figured out how to play the ‘‘Jewish’’ card in this lethal game.
The case also reveals that some Ukrainians and ethnic Germans in the administration tried unsuccessfully to help Jews.
Whether or not individual attempts to assist Jews were altruistic, they were
almost always sabotaged by those who sought to exploit the Nazi system, feared
Nazi punishment, or were simply anti-Semitic. Do these ‘‘accomplices’’ to the
Holocaust have anything in common? Can one particular political, social, or
ethnic group be singled out? Survivor Nina Glozman condemned ‘‘sadistic’’
Ukrainians and ethnic Germans as the local perpetrators and collaborators in
the German’s ‘‘Final Solution.’’ 82 Soviet historiography and some polemical
Jewish accounts of the Holocaust blamed Ukrainian nationalists as the leading sector of the population that collaborated with the Germans.83 Ukrainian
nationalists did infiltrate the German administration, but were they the largest
number of Nazi collaborators who persecuted and even murdered the Jews?
Both factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists espoused antiSemitism, and their concept of a Ukrainian state was not a multiethnic one.
In April , Stepan Bandera’s Second General Congress at Cracow issued a

Making Genocide Possible
resolution to fight the Jews, whom he branded as the ‘‘vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in Ukraine.’’ A month later, as Bandera’s leaders trained their
task forces for their role in Operation Barbarossa, they prepared a seventypage set of guidelines titled ‘‘Struggle and Activities of the OUN in Wartime.’’
According to scholars Karel Berkhoff and Marco Carynnyk, the OUN-B document states that ‘‘at a time of chaos and confusion liquidation of undesirable Polish, Muscovite, and Jewish activists is permitted, especially supporters
of Bolshevik-Muscovite imperialism.’’ The guidelines also identified the main
props of Soviet power in Ukraine as certain western Poles and Muscovite Russians as well as Jews, who were censured ‘‘both individually and as a national
group.’’ According to the OUN-B’s prewar instructions, these enemies should
be made ‘‘harmless when the new revolutionary order is being established in
Ukraine.’’ In the future autonomous Ukraine, assimilated Jews were also not
welcome.84 In July , the head of the newly declared Ukrainian state, Iaroslav
Stets’ko, wrote in his autobiography: ‘‘Although I consider Moscow, which in
fact held Ukraine in captivity, and not Jewry, to be the main and decisive enemy,
I nonetheless fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the
Jews, who are helping Moscow enslave Ukraine. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine, barring their assimilation and the like.’’ 85
Stets’ko’s writings and recently discovered documents from Ukrainian nationalists attached to Bandera’s movement demonstrate that OUN-B leaders
supported Nazi anti-Jewish actions. Yet they also shared the German concern
for social order by warning against the outbreak of wild pogroms. Thus Nazi
leaders assumed that Ukrainians would start pogroms, but Ukrainian nationalist activists who infiltrated the rural administrations instructed their sympathizers to avoid disorganized massacres of Jews.
With the Germans taking the lead in the Holocaust and facing little or no
resistance from the local non-Jewish population, there was actually little need
for the Ukrainian nationalists to wage an anti-Semitic propaganda campaign.
Their anti-Russian propaganda was sufficient. Since the nineteenth century,
the Jews of Ukraine had tended to ally themselves with Russian, rather than
Ukrainian, culture; hence, from the local Ukrainian perspective, the Jews had
entered into an alliance with the ‘‘enemy’’ camp of Russian, Muscovite oppressors. Thus in  the OUN saw the Jewish and Polish threats as ancillary to a
Russian-centered Bolshevik threat.86
It is striking however that Bandera’s task forces in the Zhytomyr region
rarely commented in their reports about the atrocities, nor did they indicate
that local nationalists instigated pogroms. One Bandera agent only noted in a
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
perfunctory way that ‘‘on Sunday,  September, all the Jews of Miropol were
shot.’’ In the nationalists’ accounts of village life in Zhytomyr in , there
were no criticisms of the German-led atrocities against the Jews, at least none
made by the nationalists themselves and none that the nationalists observed.87
If not outright support, then a general indifference seemed to prevail.
The Jews of the Zhytomyr region who managed to survive the  period of
SS and army occupation were those in hiding, those whose locales had not yet
been ‘‘cleansed,’’ and those who were shunted into ghettos and forced labor.
Near Vinnytsia the longest-standing ghetto in the region at Khmil’nyk (which
was liquidated in June ) contained about , Jews; this was the remnant population that survived a massacre of an estimated , Jews on  January .88 The largest population of survivors was in Vinnytsia proper; about
, Jewish laborers and their families were confined to the sewing factory
and the brick works. Individuals whose villages and towns had been raided
by the killing commandos but were able to escape the ‘‘roundup’’ roamed the
countryside, hiding in barns and hovels.89 When Rosenberg’s commissars arrived in November  fewer than  Jews remained in the city of Zhytomyr;
German officials in the police, army, and civil administration employed them
as printers, shoemakers, tailors, and carpenters.90 In the more remote villages
that the commandos and other German army and security forces were unable
to reach in , the rural German gendarmerie, Ukrainian and ethnic German
Schutzmannschaften, and a variety of non-SS agencies introduced the genocide under the rule of the commissars.
Hitler desired the rapid transfer of newly occupied territory from military
to civilian administration. With the German-Soviet front about  miles from
Zhytomyr outside Kiev, he ordered on  August  that the western half of
Ukraine, including part of the Zhytomyr region, be placed within the borders
of the civilian government as early as  September.91 A flurry of decrees set this
transfer in motion. The position of military commander (Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber) was created as the supreme military authority over the civilian zones
of occupation. Göring’s role as chief of the Four-Year Plan was extended to
economic matters of the entire occupied East. By October  the Sixth and
Seventeenth Armies along with units of Einsatzgruppe C and General Roques’s
Rear Army administration had advanced eastward to the Dnepr and beyond.
Under Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber Karl Kitzinger, the military’s presence in the
Zhytomyr region continued with forced requisitions of food and clothing for
the army, the transport of troops to the front, the management of military hospitals, bordellos, field and town command posts, and the roughly seventeen
stationary POW camps scattered around Zhytomyr and the neighboring com
Making Genocide Possible
missariat of Volhynia.92 Göring’s Four-Year Plan and the Wehrmacht’s General Quartermaster’s Office maintained a network of agricultural leaders and
economic commandos to ensure that the troops could ‘‘live off the land’’ in
Ukraine. Yet Wehrmacht and SS-police agencies lost their unchallenged control of the region to a new caste of civilian rulers, known as ‘‘commissars.’’
Making Genocide Possible

Chapter 5 The Zhytomyr General Commissariat,
1942–1943
As regards the Eastern Territories . . . I wish only broad instructions to be issued from Berlin; the settlement of day-to-day
issues can safely be left in the hands of the respective regional
commissars.
—Adolf Hitler, 22 July 1942
Although the German war against the Soviet Union had long
been in the minds and on the planning tables of the Nazi leadership, it was only
after the campaign was well under way that Hitler held a meeting to determine
who the new leaders of the conquered territory would be, define the administrative structure and its boundaries, and establish the official terminology for
the occupied territories and its leaders. On  July  Hitler convened Alfred
Rosenberg, Heinrich Lammers, Wilhelm Keitel, Hermann Göring, and Martin
Bormann at his headquarters. At the start he reminded his top brass that Nazi
plans for the East were to be kept secret; as he put it: ‘‘We are not to publicize our objectives to the world; instead the main thing is that we ourselves
know what we want.’’ To the outside observer, Hitler continued, it must seem
that Germany had been forced or obligated to liberate the territory in order to
bring order and security. As Hitler explained it, the German conquest of these
areas had been done in the interest of the local inhabitants. Once power over
the area was achieved, then Nazi plans could be carried out without having to
provide ‘‘superfluous’’ explanations to the world. Then Hitler bluntly remarked,
‘‘Regardless, we are taking all necessary measures—shootings, resettlement,
etc.—and can do so nevertheless.’’ 1
With what seemed to be a crumbling Europe at his feet, Hitler elaborated on
his secret strategy for controlling and Germanizing the vast territories under
Nazi domination (including plans for Germany’s allies in Slovakia, Hungary,
and Romania). What matters, he stated, was ‘‘to break the giant [Soviet] cake
into manageable pieces so that we can, first, govern, secondly administer, and
thirdly exploit it.’’ As for Ukraine, Hitler ordered that the Crimea be totally
cleansed of foreign elements and settled by Germans. Likewise, the old Austrian territory of Galicia was to be a Reich territory.
Then Hitler brought up one of his favorite topics: British rule in India. He
asked his coterie to learn from England and to follow the example of British
relations with Indian princes. He praised the Englishman’s ‘‘consistent pursuit
of one line and one aim.’’ In this regard, he urged his deputies to remain focused
on their secret long-term objectives in the East and not get tangled up in the
opinions of others, including the indigenous leaders. ‘‘Out of the newly-won
Eastern Territories,’’ Hitler declared, ‘‘we must make a Garden of Eden; they
[the Eastern Territories] are vital to us; [overseas] colonies, on the other hand,
play an entirely subordinate role.’’
In the discussion over the appointment of the Reich commissar for Ukraine,
Rosenberg nominated Fritz Sauckel; however, Göring insisted that Erich Koch
was the better candidate. He argued that Koch was most capable of exploiting
the territory economically and displayed the strongest initiative and best background to do the job. In other words, Koch would be the most ruthless and
least sympathetic to Ukrainians who desired autonomy. Being relatively proUkrainian in his outlook, and fearing that the headstrong Koch would undermine his authority, Rosenberg objected to Koch’s nomination, but he lost this
battle. The Führer asserted that ‘‘the most important region for the next three
years is undoubtedly the Ukraine. Therefore, it will be best for Koch to be appointed there.’’ 2
The meeting closed on the topic of security issues. Hitler reassured his deputies that should an uprising occur in the new territories, Göring could always
bring in his Luftwaffe to bomb the area. But even this might not suffice. Thus,
he urged, ‘‘the enormous area must, of course, be pacified as quickly as possible; the best way for this to happen will be if anyone who even looks askance is shot
dead.’’ Field Marshal Keitel added, ‘‘The inhabitants would have to know that
anyone who did not work would be shot and that they would be made liable
to arrest for any offense.’’ 3 The day after this meeting, Hitler issued two decrees: one concerning the administration of the East under Alfred Rosenberg,
who was named Reich minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories; and the
other concerning the police security of the occupied East, which was assigned
to Reich Leader of the SS and Police Heinrich Himmler.4
How removed was this discussion from events taking place in the field?
From the standpoint of the regional commanders in Zhytomyr, there existed a
common understanding about how to treat the Jewish population and Soviet
intelligentsia. However, there was ambiguity about how to treat the rest of the
local population. In the short run, colonial-style exploitation of the region’s resources and people seemed appropriate for the war effort and Germany’s economy, but it remained unclear how these practices over time would lead to the
The Zhytomyr General Commissariat

creation of a ‘‘Garden of Eden.’’ As long as Germany continued to expand its
territory, population, and economy, it mattered little to Hitler’s followers that
his utopian dreams of a perfect Aryan existence in Europe were inherently irrational, nebulous, and criminal. Instead they devised rationalized systems and
procedures for exploiting the new Nazi empire and destroying any perceived
threats or impediments to their hegemony.
The decrees that established Nazi rule in Ukraine were no more specific than
designating who was in charge. Hitler’s minions had to determine how their
respective agencies functioned, and they pursued independent courses from
the beginning to the end. Himmler and Rosenberg began to devise their structural frameworks before the invasion: Rosenberg planned for a sprawling bureaucracy of administrative commissars, statisticians, Slavic specialists, and
indigenous committees, a plan that never reached the scale of his grandiose
vision. Himmler and Heydrich started with a smaller hierarchical staff of senior
SS and police leaders and special task forces that later multiplied into a vast
network of German SS, mobile Order Police, and stationary gendarmerie supported by battalions of Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Latvian auxiliaries. Meanwhile, Göring’s plan for controlling the eastern economy with technical inspectors, businessmen, and agricultural overseers represented only one of several
highly competitive organizations that ravaged Ukraine’s economic resources;
others included the food and agricultural ministry, the army’s armament economy office, and private concerns.
All of these agencies coexisted independently, and their representatives in
the field operated under an evolving structure. Inasmuch as Nazi leaders and
their subordinates believed in a permanent German presence in the East, if not
a thousand-year Reich governing the territory, the everyday reality of ruling the
conquered land and its peoples was not simply, as Hitler had predicted, a matter of organization. The administrative apparatus with its extended agencies
was unstable, and in many ways self-destructive. The protracted war meant
that lower-level administrators lived with the constant threat of being sent
to the front. Even within the senior ranks of Nazi officialdom one’s position
was never secure because of Hitler’s autocratic power and the encroachment
of Himmler’s expanding SS-police empire. The fly-by-night atmosphere of the
regional administration was exacerbated by the motley assemblage of peripheral leaders, who were granted substantial ruling power within their fiefdoms
and charged with the most criminal colonization aims in European history.
As Hitler saw it, his ‘‘viceroys’’ controlled the everyday affairs of policy implementation from the practical issues to the political repercussions. Rosenberg echoed Hitler’s concept of colonial rule when he wrote that the district

The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
commissar directs the local administration of the region and ‘‘therefore in him
lies the weight of the entire administration.’’ 5 Instructions from Berlin were
broadly defined so that the lower levels had to devise methods for their speedy
and efficient implementation. Thus when it came to realizing Nazi aims, it was
up to the local leadership to figure out how to best meet their superiors’ demands with the resources at hand. To this end, the commissars could choose
to cooperate or compete with the various German agencies in their districts.
There was also ample room for peripheral leaders to pursue their own selfinterests. Like most regional functionaries in the East, the officials in Zhytomyr felt removed from the Reich: they experienced time lags in reporting, poor
telephone connections, slow mail delivery, broken ties with family members
and sweethearts, and a physical surrounding that simply did not feel like home.
However, unlike their counterparts in the Baltics, Belorussia, and other parts
of Ukraine, regional leaders in Zhytomyr also felt the direct presence of Hitler,
Himmler, Göring, Bormann, and other powerful Nazis who frequented the region with their security entourages. The local leaders needed to demonstrate
to their superiors that policies were being implemented with the expected results, despite the constraints of local conditions.
The Administration of Hitler’s Garden of Eden
The German regional administration consisted of a thin layer of about 
German commissariat officials who were responsible for a population of .
million persons and an area of , square kilometers.6 In addition to the
twenty-five (later twenty-six) rural districts of the commissariat, the Germans
created two city district administrations in Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr. The district leaders or Gebietskommissare reported to General Commissar Kurt Klemm
(and his successor Ernst Leyser) in the region’s capital, the city of Zhytomyr.7
In the outlying district offices the Gebietskommissare worked with an army
commander who was situated in the same town or nearby. The typical Gebietskommissar oversaw a geographic area of , square kilometers with about
, inhabitants. These rural overlords were assisted by a small German
staff with four departmental chiefs (Administration, Finance, Economy, and
Labor), at least two agricultural and forestry specialists, and one female typiststenographer.8 For example, the district commissariat office in NovohradVolyns’kyi had twenty Reich Germans supported by at least seventy Ukrainians
and ethnic Germans, who worked as administrators, translators, typists, couriers, stable hands, chauffeurs, cooks, cleaning women, land surveyors, veterinarians, agronomists, and other positions. The smaller villages that lay beyond
The Zhytomyr General Commissariat

Organizational chart of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine
(U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Acc. .A. Zhytomyr Oblast’ Records, reel , --)
Organizational chart of a Gebietskommissariat in Ukraine
(U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Acc. .A. Zhytomyr Oblast’ Records, reel , --)
the Gebietskommissar’s headquarters were supervised by indigenous collaborators, who were known as Rayon (raion) leaders (district leaders) and starosty
(village elders). Each German Gebietskommissar employed about three fulltime Ukrainian raion leaders, who in turn relied on about forty village elders to
communicate and carry out German orders. Hundreds of additional Reich officials from private business firms, special labor-recruiting commissions, Organization Todt, or other government offices were scattered across the region,
such as representatives of the Reichpost, the railway, and the ZHO (Zentralhandelsgesellschaft Ost, Central Trade Company East). They were required to
register with the commissar’s office when they arrived in the region, but these
individuals were not directly subordinate to the district commissar.
To each Gebietskommissar, Himmler assigned a gendarmerie platoon that
was distributed across the district. There were eighty gendarme stations (an
average of three per district), each headed by a German commander ranking
no higher than a lieutenant and supported by two more German policemen, a
translator, and between fifty to eighty Ukrainian auxiliary police (Schutzmannschaften).9 The gendarme station leaders reported to the SS and police district
leader, who was technically on a par with one of the department heads of the
Gebietskommissar’s main staff. There were six Sipo-SD offices (Aussenstellen)
in the region (in Zhytomyr, Berdychiv, Vinnytsia, Ovruch, Mazyr, and Haisyn).
Einsatzgruppen personnel, including the most seasoned killers, were used to
establish the new stationary Sipo-SD offices in the commissariat; for example,
members of Einsatzkommando  were among the staffs of the Vinnytsia and
Zhytomyr offices.10 The entire SS-police apparatus fell under the control of the
higher SS and police leader, SS General Hans-Adolf Prützmann, who had his
headquarters in Kiev, not in the commissariat’s capital of Rivne.
The German civil administration in Ukraine was not meant to be a temporary, ad hoc form of rule but the beginning of a long-term colonization process.
Like Britain’s India, Hitler argued, Ukraine would be governed by a handful of
German imperialists. But they would be aided by a steady flow of German (and
Dutch) settlers, farmers, entrepreneurs, retired soldiers, engineers, horticulturists, and others who would transform the otherwise daunting open space
of the East into Nazi Germany’s frontier paradise. There would be no indigenous elites besides the Reich and ethnic Germans. Ukrainians, who were to be
denied any education beyond the fourth grade, were deemed useful as long as
they supplied the Germans with everything demanded, supplying grain to all
of Europe, slaving on a plantation-style collective farm, and performing all the
necessary but unpleasant grunt work that was considered beneath the superior
Aryans. In the triumphant atmosphere of Hitler’s headquarters in Septem
The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
ber , when Kiev had just fallen to the Wehrmacht, Hitler proclaimed that
in Ukraine ‘‘the Germans—this is essential—will have to constitute amongst
themselves a closed society, like a fortress. The least of our stable-lads must
be superior to any native.’’ 11
Later in April , Hitler offered his views on non-Germans in the administration: ‘‘As an administrative organization,’’ Hitler stated, ‘‘the most we can
concede to them is a form of communal administration, and that only in so far
as it may be necessary for the maintenance of the labor potential, that is to say
for the maintenance of the basic needs of the individual.’’ Hitler opined that
the system should be strictly hierarchical down to the village level and should
not encourage any cooperation among neighboring communities, but rather
‘‘every form of dissension and schism.’’ 12 According to Hitler’s vision, regional
leaders in Zhytomyr constructed an indigenous administration that started at
the top with a General Commissariat–level advisory and self-help committee
composed of Ukrainians. The committees were not supposed to encourage any
independent Ukrainian political activity, but they were meant to provide food,
medical treatment, shelter, clothing, and other forms of relief for the local nonGerman population. The committee in Zhytomyr was managed by the chief of
Zhytomyr’s city administration, Bürgermeister Pavlovsky.13 Beneath the Ukrainian mayor’s office, the raion and village elders (starosty) provided the Germans with a network of local supervisors and informers; the weight of Nazi
demands fell on their shoulders directly as they were held personally responsible for the population’s fulfillment of German orders in the most remote
locations. Ukrainian advisory boards, mayors, raion leaders, and elders were
not connected into a unified framework; rather, they remained isolated extensions of the German city and district administrations.
Rarely did a Reich German official venture out to the countryside to directly
supervise the Ukrainian and ethnic German raion leaders and elders.14 But the
Nazi terror permeated society. Anyone who defied or obstructed the implementation of Nazi orders was deemed a saboteur and subject to the death penalty.
Thus it was very clear to the non-Germans who worked for the Nazis that their
existence lay in the balance, depending often on the individual whim of a German ruler. Under these uncertain conditions, Ukrainians in the local administration perpetuated a system that promised them nothing in the long term.15
Although most Ukrainians may have felt powerless, numerically they dominated the system. By  there were about , Ukrainians working in the
rural German police stations and commissars’ outposts. At least , served
as village elders. Hundreds staffed various German administrative offices in
the cities of Zhytomyr and Vinnytsia. These figures do not include the UkrainiThe Zhytomyr General Commissariat

ans who kept various charitable organizations and schools running, as well as
a separate Ukrainian court system that mostly settled civil disputes between
Ukrainians. It is difficult to precisely tabulate the figure of Ukrainian functionaries and civil servants, but their numbers were significant and strongly
suggest that Ukrainians wielded more influence over the everyday operations
of the Nazi system than postwar accounts would dare to admit.16
What the Germans lacked in numbers, however, they made up for in the
power of their presence, which was a potent mixture of hubris, terror, and violence. Ukrainians mocked the commissars who strutted about like ‘‘Golden
Pheasants’’ in their brown uniforms. Wartime critics and postwar scholarship
have branded the entire Rosenberg commissariat an ‘‘administrative monstrosity,’’ led by a group of ‘‘egotistical hyenas,’’ ‘‘carpetbaggers’’ and ‘‘Ostnieten’’
(eastern losers).17 Who were the commissars that ruled over the Zhytomyr region and how did they conduct themselves?
The Commissars ‘‘Golden Pheasants,’’ ‘‘Egotistical
Hyenas,’’ ‘‘Carpetbaggers,’’ and ‘‘Ordensjunker’’
The recruiting of commissars for the Zhytomyr region began in early September  when Rosenberg’s deputy, Alfred Meyer, who was the former Gauleiter of Westphalia, contacted one of his fellow Westphalians, the Regierungspräsident (governor) from Münster, Kurt Klemm. Meyer asked him to take the
position of general commissar over the Zhytomyr region. The forty-seven-yearold Klemm, the only Berufsbeamte (professional civil servant) found among the
other five general commissars who were appointed to lead the regional administrations of Ukraine, moved to a new temporary office in Berlin, where he
began to select department chiefs for his staff and district commissars for the
Zhytomyr region. A decorated veteran of World War I and a member of the Nazi
Party since , Klemm distinguished himself as a chief constable in the Ruhr
(at Recklinghausen) and early on earned a place within new elite of the Third
Reich, which was recognized by his inclusion in a ‘‘Who’s Who’’ of German
leaders, Das Deutsche Führerlexikon /. With a requirement that  percent
of his personnel hold Nazi Party membership, Klemm began compiling lists
of names, drawing from the Ordensjunker (graduates of the Adolf Hitler Schools
for Nazi political training), SA captains, chiefs of Gauleiter departments, Nazi
Party district leaders, and government officials with some Party affiliation. Connections to the Party were important for pragmatic and ideological reasons.
For example, the man chosen to serve as the German city commissar of Zhytomyr, Fritz Magass, also served as the Nazi Party leader for the district. To his
 The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
Kurt Klemm, general commissar of the
General Bezirk Zhytomyr, September
–September . The image was
provided by Randall Bytwerk, German
Propaganda Archive, Calvin College,
with the assistance of Ronald Coleman,
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
(Das Deutsche Führerlexikon
/)
list Klemm added a colleague from Münster, a mayor who had been in Zhytomyr when the Germans occupied the area during World War I.18
Klemm submitted the personnel lists to his superior, Reich Commissar for
Ukraine Erich Koch, for approval. Those chosen as district commissars were
not told exactly where they would be stationed but were instructed to find a secretary, driver, and translator to accompany them to the East. The commissars
were then ordered to meet Klemm and Koch on  October at the Falkenburg
on the Krössinsee (Pomerania) for briefings about their duties. The Falkenburg
at Krössinsee was one of three castles where Nazi elites were groomed based
on ancient models of the German Order of Knights.19 Little documentation has
survived from the briefings, but evidently one of the highlights of the Krössinsee orientation was a speech by Koch’s deputy, a fellow East Prussian and
Regierungspräsident named Paul Dargel. Dargel shared Koch’s hard-core Nazi
chauvinism and anti-Semitism, but he surpassed Koch as an orator and administrator. In fact, Dargel ended up managing the commissariat administration
from its capital in Rivne because Koch spent most of his time at his estate in
East Prussia or at Hitler’s headquarters in Vinnytsia.
The fanfare and hype surrounding the orientation quickly disintegrated into
false starts and administrative bungles as the commissars’ rail transport to
Zhytomyr was repeatedly delayed by the Reich railway office. After being
The Zhytomyr General Commissariat

stranded for some time in Pomerania, the commissars’ ‘‘special transport’’ of
thirty-nine railway cars with  staff members finally arrived in early November to a snow-covered Zhytomyr with bitter, subzero-degree temperatures.20
In the city of Zhytomyr, which had suffered extensive bombing, Klemm and his
departmental chiefs took over the former state museum building for their temporary administrative headquarters. As for the district commissars in the rural
areas, each was allotted three vehicles, a typewriter, two or three Nazi flags, a
radio set, several thousand sheets of paper, and words of encouragement from
Klemm, who declared that the administration ‘‘shall fulfill the tasks that have
been conferred upon us by the Führer with a cheerful devotion . . . and without bureaucratic formalism.’’ 21
Ironically, just as Klemm jettisoned ‘‘bureaucratic formalism’’ in Zhytomyr,
Rosenberg’s staff was completing the first edition of ‘‘guidelines’’ for the commissars in Ukraine, a cumbersome, long-winded manuscript of nearly seventy
pages known as the ‘‘Brown File.’’ From his distant position in Berlin, Rosenberg instructed Ukraine’s district commissars about the strict but ‘‘necessary’’
tasks of German colonization. Among the commissars’ most urgent administrative tasks were:
(a) police measures;
(b) exploitation of economy;
(c) welfare of the local population;
(d) property confiscation and plundering;
(e) reestablishment and maintenance of the transport and postal systems;
(f ) supervision of civilians through the intelligence services (Abwehr and
SD); and
(g) destruction of remaining opposition.22
As this list shows, the commissars’ priorities overlapped with the work of
other agencies, namely Himmler’s SS-police apparatus. Unlike the ‘‘smooth’’
division of labor that developed between the Wehrmacht and the SS-police in
the military occupation zones, however, in the commissariat the atmosphere
tended to be more competitive and confused. For example, Himmler’s SS and
police leaders were responsible for initiating a reprisal measure, but the commissars had to consent to the measure and approve or order the executions of
the hostages. Thus, according to the official design of the local German hierarchy, the German police suggested measures but could only carry them out
upon approval of the commissar.23 At the lowest levels of German rule, the
commissar was supposed to wield exclusive power over the population as a
whole, more than his counterparts and subordinates in the SS-police. The com The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
missar was nominally the highest judicial authority at the regional and district
levels, whereas the Sipo-SD and police forces investigated, arrested, and interrogated those accused of serious racial and political crimes.24 In practice,
the SS-police carried out death sentences without the commissar’s approval.
Rosenberg’s guidelines, which are mostly representative of his pedantic approach, also reveal his waning influence over the most secret Nazi policies that
had evolved at a rapid pace during the summer and fall of .25 For example,
he advised his commissars that ‘‘after the war the Jewish question will be generally solved for all of Europe,’’ but in the meantime they should undertake
‘‘preparatory measures’’ such as registration and ghettoization of Jews. More
telling in Rosenberg’s guidelines for anti-Jewish policy was his statement that
‘‘the experiences in handling the Jewish question in the Occupied Eastern Territories can serve as a guide for solving the entire problem since the Jews in
the territories together with the Jews of the General Government comprise the
largest contingent of European Jewry.’’ His statement captured the Nazi perception of the East as a laboratory for radical anti-Jewish measures and social
engineering schemes.26
The commissars may have occasionally referred to the ‘‘Brown File,’’ but
the stream of directives that later poured into their offices, the swift flow of
events, and changing conditions in the field eventually made the ‘‘Brown File’’
an obsolete document. Once in their regional outposts, the district commissars
carried out their duties in ways that sometimes strayed far from Rosenberg’s
initial schemes, either by personal choice or because they had to contend with
fluctuating conditions and uncertain relations with other agencies in the field.
Not long after the commissars arrived in Ukraine, Rosenberg received conflicting reports from the field about German attitudes and conduct toward
Ukrainians. Evidently, the commissars were treating Ukrainians as ‘‘Negroes’’
because, as they asserted, the ‘‘territory will be built up like a colony.’’ 27 The
commissars’ conduct showed that they did what they believed was possible
and allowable as satraps in the Nazi empire. Some Nazi regional leaders fancied themselves as overseers in a system reminiscent of the antebellum South
in the United States or of the European colonization of Africa. Taking their
cue from Reich Commissar Koch, who described Ukrainians as ‘‘Negroes’’ who
should be whipped publicly,28 the regional commissars spoke about Ukrainians
as ‘‘white Negroes’’ and wrote home to the Reich that the black marketeering
in Ukraine was like trading with ‘‘Negerstämmen’’ who exchanged glass beads
for ivory.29 The Nazis’ de-urbanization of Ukraine, a process that conceived of
the former Soviet collective farms and the commissars’ neofeudal estates as a
quasi-plantation system, was consistent with the use of the whip, ‘‘carpetbagThe Zhytomyr General Commissariat

ging’’ practices, and racist language about Ukrainian ‘‘Negroes.’’ 30 Ukrainians
understood the role that the Nazis had cast them in. One Ukrainian woman
wrote in her diary, ‘‘We are like slaves. Often the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin comes
to mind. Once we shed tears over those Negroes; now obviously we ourselves
are experiencing the same thing.’’ 31
As the designated satraps in the Nazi empire, the regional German commissars had a relatively broad understanding of what was possible in their everyday
dealings with Ukrainians and the rest of the population, an understanding that
occasionally clashed with the expectations of their superiors. Even Koch reprimanded the civil administrators who appeared intoxicated in public. Whipping
the civilians was acceptable to the brazenly violent Koch, but not when one was
drunk.32 The Gebietskommissar, one critic wrote, conducts himself as if he is
omnipotent and orders the deaths of civilians at whim.33
By April , the highest regional SS authority in Zhytomyr, SS and Police
Leader Otto Hellwig, had to respond to an overwhelming number of executions
that were ordered by the commissars, which the local police forces were unable
to carry out. A World War I and Freikorps veteran, Hellwig had risen quickly
within the ranks of Heydrich’s SD. At the age of thirty-nine, he was made commander of the Sipo’s Leadership School in Berlin-Charlottenburg, where he
trained the next generation of SD elites. As a Sipo officer in an Einsatzgruppe
in Poland, Hellwig led some of his cadets into battle against Polish intelligentsia and Jews during September–October . Given that he was praised by his
superiors for his ‘‘impeccable’’ character and solid ideological commitment to
Nazism, it is no wonder that Hellwig was sent to Zhytomyr to establish the SS’s
place on the new frontier. True to form, Hellwig insisted that the commissars
pass their orders for executing civilians first to his office for approval.34
German-Ukrainian Interaction Fraternization,
Black Marketeering, and Plundering
German-Ukrainian relations, which were strained from the start, were far
from ameliorated by the commissars’ conduct. Fraternization with the local
population was considered a serious crime under Nazi occupation regulations,
even punishable by death; nevertheless, members of the civil administration
and troops quartered in Zhytomyr violated this rule.35 In order to prevent further contact between the Germans and local Ukrainian women, the army established a bordello in Zhytomyr that they opened to the Reich Germans in the civil
administration two days per week. The bordello came at the suggestion of an
army doctor, who found that cases of venereal disease were increasing, espe The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
cially among Reich Germans who were temporarily based in Zhytomyr. More
racially acceptable ‘‘partners,’’ such as Dutch women, were brought in to serve
as prostitutes at the bordello.36 Nazi Party activists in Zhytomyr’s Party headquarters also tried to prevent sexual relations between Germans and Ukrainians by inviting local Volksdeutsche women to social gatherings in the city.37
Outside of the official bordello and Nazi Party functions, military personnel
and civilian authorities continued to pursue and often raped local Ukrainian
women, and these violations were kept quiet. In at least two instances, one
in the city of Zhytomyr and the other in Berdychiv, SS-police officials sexually
abused Ukrainian women and then murdered the women to keep these racial
violations secret.38 Indeed, property theft and rape were considered more punishable offenses than murder. Since there were many Ukrainian women working in the underground inside and outside the administration, German perpetrators could rationalize the murder of women who were sexually abused not
only as a cover-up for the Nazi crime of miscegenation but also as a ‘‘precautionary measure’’ against Soviet espionage.39
Occasionally, however, these cases became public: for example, when a German member of the administration was sentenced by a Nazi court for shooting
his Ukrainian lover in a drunken state.40 To be sure, romantic relationships developed between Ukrainians and Germans, and these social ties caused other
problems for the local Nazi leadership. In Novohrad-Volyns’kyi, for example,
the labor official of the district commissar’s office complained that military
personnel were safeguarding their Ukrainian girlfriends from deportation and
forced labor in the Reich.41 Often Reich Germans who carried on ‘‘illegal’’ relations with Ukrainians also couriered letters and reports between Ukrainians
who worked in the Reich and their relations in Ukraine. These letters revealed
the cruel treatment and conditions of laborers in Germany, sabotaging local
propaganda efforts to induce Ukrainians to work in Germany.42 The children of
these Ukrainian-German relationships had uncertain futures. Some mothers
tried to secure Aryan papers for them, which often resulted in their being kidnapped and taken into German homes and orphanages.43
Since the leadership could not prevent sexual relations between Germans
and Ukrainians and the leadership’s aim was to reduce the non-German population, Hitler, Himmler, and Koch promoted sterilization of Ukrainian women
and abortions. On  July , after Martin Bormann toured the collective
farms around Hitler’s Vinnytsia headquarters, he presented his impressions of
the Ukrainians’ robust physical features to Hitler. Hitler commented that the
‘‘fertility’’ of Ukrainian women threatened to increase the non-German population. The next day Bormann ordered Rosenberg’s officials to develop policies
The Zhytomyr General Commissariat

and programs for forced sterilization and abortions in Ukraine. Koch was asked
to use the local police to seize Ukrainian women on the streets who prostitute
themselves, ‘‘wearing shorts, cosmetics, and smoking’’ and to openly denounce
at least ten women as whores. In addition to demanding the public shaming of
Ukrainian women, Hitler and Bormann insisted that ‘‘the reproductive ability
of the women must be lowered to decrease the race.’’ Consequently Koch instructed his district officials to make sure that Ukrainian women had every
available chance to have an abortion.44
German officials were supposed to keep their distance from Ukrainians by
establishing their own shops, restaurants, clubs, theaters, and housing settlements. Nonetheless, the commissars and their staff—and certainly other Germans stationed in Zhytomyr—were also actively engaged in the black market
and other activities with Ukrainians.45 In one of the more interesting cases,
a German official named Walter Pieper, who headed the general commissar’s
transportation and commerce department, befriended one of his Ukrainian
subordinates, Ivan Shynal’skii, an electrician and mechanic who was also
secretly involved in Zhytomyr’s underground resistance. According to Shynal’skii, he and Pieper often disagreed about how a particular technical problem should be resolved, and because Shynal’skii often presented a better solution, Pieper grew to respect him and later protected him when he was suspected
of involvement with the partisans. Shynal’skii survived the war.46
Though there are significant individual cases of somewhat ‘‘friendly’’ relations between German officials and Ukrainians who staffed the administration,
local German authorities were more aware and alarmed about the rampant
bartering between Germans and Ukrainians that was turning Ukraine, as one
German critic wrote, into the Reich’s biggest ‘‘flea market.’’ 47 The regional SS
and police leader Hellwig sent out numerous orders that any Germans found
bartering at the Ukrainian markets be punished; German police and Ukrainian
auxiliaries patrolled the marketplace.48 But the illegal trading continued and
became central to the local economy. The commander of the Order Police in
Zhytomyr, Gotthilf Oemler, reported to City Commissar Magass that German
civil administrators were offering black market items to the Ukrainian auxiliary police as a sort of compensation.49
Black marketeering of Ukrainian produce for German manufactured wares
extended from Zhytomyr back to the Reich. German officials in Zhytomyr sent
letters home asking for items to trade, not glass beads for the ‘‘natives,’’ as
Hitler had imagined, but cosmetics, matches, and toothbrushes. One factory
leader in Pohrebyshche, Gustav Höpel, who bribed the local postmaster with
bottles of schnapps, sent to his wife in Germany fifteen packages of meat, but The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
ter, and flour with a note indicating that when he came home in two months,
he would bring , eggs. After he was arrested in October , he defended
his actions with the statement that he was just doing what everyone else did in
Ukraine.50
One observer revealed that this ‘‘Tauschmanie’’ (barter mania) had taken on
an official tone as a normal everyday duty, much like the official ‘‘plundering’’
campaigns that the commissars carried out. In addition to the ‘‘requisitions’’
of produce from the collective farms, the commissars supervised the seizure of
private property from the Jews and Ukrainians and then resold or redistributed
the material to individuals and other German agencies. While stolen property
circulated through official and unofficial channels, the most senior army, civil
and police leaders condemned plundering; the military commander of Reich
Commissariat Ukraine, Karl Kitzinger, reported that military field courts were
sentencing German soldiers to death for stealing and selling goods on the black
market to Ukrainians.51 In the Ukrainian paper Holos Volyni (Voice of Volyn’),
which was controlled and censored by the occupation authorities, the Germans
publicized that no one could inhabit or plunder former Jewish property without the permission of the local German commissar.52
Nevertheless, like the army commanders’  response to the atrocities
committed by individual soldiers, senior civilian officials disapproved of random acts of self-interest and insisted that their subordinates carry out orders
on behalf of the Reich, no matter if the orders were to execute civilians and
seize their property; the subordinates’ actions simply had to go through official channels in a controlled manner. Thus, while regional leaders in Zhytomyr
issued death sentences to individuals who ‘‘stole’’ Reich plunder, these same
officials supervised Reich agencies for seizing and distributing personal property.
In Zhytomyr’s General Commissariat office, three departments handled official plundering activities: the finance office, the housing bureau, and the inventory commission.53 Already in the first days of the commissars’ rule in November , the housing office in Zhytomyr began the ‘‘official’’ seizure of Jewish
and Ukrainian property. Over the next two years, this office handled the transfer of former Jewish and Ukrainian dwellings to Reich and ethnic Germans.54
The inventory commission sold Jewish property to German personnel based
in the area.55 During the winter, the Army High Command demanded that the
commissars collect winter clothing from Ukrainians for the troops and then
paid the civil administration for the seized fur coats, hats, wool pants, leather
boots, and the like.56 The finance office, which also collected exorbitant taxes
from the population, took in the money from the sale of seized Jewish propThe Zhytomyr General Commissariat

erty and Ukrainian produce. Many items snatched up by commissariat officials
were supposed to be given to ethnic German families, but they too ended up
on the black market.57
Despite formal efforts to control looting through official Reich agencies, it
was difficult to distinguish ‘‘official’’ tasks from individual violations. When
staff of the commissariat searched around for suitable office space, they simply
pulled a truck up to a Ukrainian shop or business, demanded the premises be
vacated, took what they wanted, and set up their office.58 In Berdychiv, Gebietskommissar Erwin Göllner enjoyed Persian rugs, satin bedding, and Viennese
tortes.59 Even with the severe shortage of paper, commissars sent each other
memos simply to brag about the ‘‘fruits’’ of their plundering campaigns and
black marketeering.60 Meanwhile, the commissars complained that they could
not afford to pay wages to their Ukrainian staff and cut their pay to such levels
that one month’s salary was worth less than two kilograms of butter.61 By mid General Commissar Ernst Leyser (who had replaced Klemm on  October ) wrote that district commissars and their staff were disgracing the
German uniform, and some staff members had to be sent back to Germany.62
Not all the commissars drank excessively, fraternized, plundered, and ordered executions at whim. Here and there a Gebietskommissar, like Deputy
Commissar Müller in Novohrad-Volyns’kyi, displayed some compassion for
the local population and tried to rule in a just manner, but this behavior was
rare. Lenient commissars were usually sidelined in the competitive Nazi bureaucracy. After a member of Prützmann’s Higher SS and Police staff wrote to
Müller’s superior in the General Commissariat’s office suggesting that Müller
be reprimanded for not exploiting more labor and facilities in his region, the
SS and police district leader and agricultural leader simply overrode Müller’s
authority. They marched into ‘‘his’’ district, seized workers and grain, and murdered Ukrainian village elders and mayors along with some hostages they managed to grab during the raids. Thus commissars who appeared to be too ‘‘soft’’
were unable to sustain a moderate approach within the prevailing Nazi system
of rule by force and terror.63
The Commissars’ Ukrainian Policies The Land Question
Although Nazi leaders admonished subordinates for their ‘‘indecent,’’ disruptive, or uncooperative behavior, they simultaneously nurtured a frontier
mentality that spawned lawlessness, corruption, and brutality. The contradictory notions of proper German conduct in the ‘‘Wild East’’ carried over into
the realm of Ukrainian economic and cultural policies. Hitler and Rosenberg
 The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
had envisioned that the local commissars would take some initiative; but when
the policies themselves were not clearly defined by the Nazi leadership, then the
decentralization of rule often led to ad hoc and arbitrary methods. Thus the
mere absence of uniform political policies toward the Ukrainians not only
represented, in the words of sovietologist Alexander Dallin, a ‘‘missed opportunity’’ to marshal the anti-Stalinism of the local population for the Germans’
benefit, but also served as an extension of Nazi power into the hands of regional leaders who used whatever means possible to fulfill Reich goals, or to
satisfy their own personal desires.
From the beginning of the German occupation, Ukrainian peasants clamored for the privatization and redistribution of land, and yet the commissars
failed to implement a unified land policy. The commissars received mixed messages from Koch and Rosenberg about land ownership and, in turn, made
vague promises to the Ukrainian collective farmers in order to extract more
from them. As early as September , military commanders raised local expectations by announcing (in a Ukrainian newspaper article titled ‘‘A New Way
of Life’’) that the first step toward dissolving collective farms in the Zhytomyr
region would begin with the registration of all farming equipment, livestock,
and land.64 But the official policy that was carried out was to starve the local
population by letting the army live off the land, reducing rations especially for
the townspeople, and controlling the local barter economy.65 The registration
process did not lead to more efficient farming or to a breakup of the collective
farm system. It was the first step in systematizing the Nazi confiscation of agricultural property in the East. Although more debate emerged within the civil
administration about the fate of the collective farms, ultimately the hard-liners
who backed the military’s approach (Hitler, Göring, and Koch) succeeded in
creating an exploitative colonial economy in Ukraine.
Like the military, the civil administration started out with the carrot. In
November  Koch’s chief of agriculture wrote to Klemm that the privatization of businesses and farming would occur on the anniversary date of 
June .66 In March  the commissars announced to the Ukrainians that
collective farms would no longer exist and all farmers would receive land. In
September , the Germans celebrated the formation of the first Landbaugenossenschaft (Agricultural Union) in Ukraine, which was established in Zhytomyr. In actuality the collectives were kept intact with German overseers, Ukrainian agronomists, and ethnic German managers.67 To the added disgust of the
Ukrainian peasants, the Germans forcibly ‘‘evacuated’’ tens of thousands of
peasants from their cultivated farms and handed over the produce and land,
including private plots, to Volksdeutsche settlers. Meanwhile in the areas not
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designated ethnic German colonies, Ukrainian peasants faced regular forced
requisitions of foodstuffs. In October  Ukrainian farmers (mainly women)
who had enthusiastically brought in  percent of the harvest with little or no
machinery began to face more repeated, systematic raids of the farms.68 The
German military and police seized one-third of the region’s cattle.69 According
to a local German ordinance, Ukrainians could neither sell nor purchase milk,
bread, and butter; everything was to be given over to the Germans for distribution.70 The gendarmerie and their Ukrainian and ethnic German auxiliaries
arrested individuals who were caught grinding wheat to make flour or slaughtering cattle without German permission.71 Those who were caught faced the
gallows. Indeed, under a Ukrainian-run but German-dictated justice system,
farmers received the death penalty for slaughtering livestock or sabotaging the
harvest, whereas domestic disputes that escalated into acts of murder were
punished less severely.72
One of the chief tasks of the commissariat administration was to supply
the army and the Reich with wheat, livestock, and particularly sugar from the
former Soviet capital of sugar beet farming, Vinnytsia. The most notorious German official who actually toured the farms on a regular basis was the district
agricultural leader (Landwirtschaftsführer, La-Führer), referred to by Ukrainian
peasants as ‘‘Ihr Kommandant.’’ 73 The La-Führer was an agent of Göring’s
Four-Year Plan administration and trained by the military’s economic offices.
Across the rural areas he was left to his own devices and conducted himself as
a dictator over the collective farm system. Most agricultural leaders were completely unprepared for their assignments; they were typically transplanted from
small farms in Germany to the vast stretches of Ukraine and asked to manage
large areas, about , hectares.74 Thus SS and police leaders assigned Order
Police members (mainly Ukrainian Schutzmänner) to the agricultural stations
to ensure that Ukrainian farmers complied with the agricultural leaders’ demands.75 Using strong-arm methods and the existing Soviet collective farm
system, the Nazis were able to extract , tons of grain and , heads
of cattle from the region during a six-month period.76 Their requisitions reminded Ukrainian peasants of Soviet confiscations of grain in the early s,
which resulted in the Great Famine. Though by comparison the Germans were
not as thorough as Stalin’s agents, and famine was more common in Ukraine’s
cities during the war (not in the countryside), the recent trauma of the Great
Famine was clearly in the minds of Ukrainian peasants during the Nazi occupation.
Ukrainian peasants soon realized that German promises about privatizing
the land were absurd. So they increased the use of individual, private plots
 The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
and secretly stored food, indeed more successfully than under Stalin’s rule. As
the war dragged on, the commissars, such as Gebietskommissar Fritz Halle
(in Vinnytsia), continued to propagate the idea that privatization would come
in the future; Halle decreed that in the interim state of war the people must
secure the harvest for the Germans, and he stepped up the use of German and
Ukrainian police to supervise the requisitions. German agricultural policies
were a total failure. Ukrainian farmers were given no incentive to work for the
Germans and were forced into servitude under the Nazi whip. Productivity declined, and varied forms of resistance increased.77
Ukrainian Schools and Popular Culture
Educational and cultural policies were also ill defined, but the commissars
dealt with this ambiguity in a variety of ways. Hitler and his sycophant Koch
had ordered that schooling only be allowed up to the fourth grade because, they
argued, the Ukrainians needed only to learn basic reading and math in order to
serve the Germans. By contrast, Rosenberg tried to persuade Hitler and other
German leaders to pursue more pro-Ukrainian policies that supported culture
and education.78 The conflicting statements and utterances of Nazi leaders revealed that there was no clear consensus about the immediate future of Ukrainians and their culture. Intentionally or not, they left Ukrainian educational and
religious policies to the regional commissars.
At first the commissars reopened the Ukrainian-run middle schools. By the
end of , however, the functioning of Ukrainian schools beyond the elementary level had become a farce, because thirteen-year-old children had become targets of labor raids; if they were not working in the field under their
parent’s supervision, they were being placed in German concentration camps
for youths.79 Based on an ‘‘urgent’’ order of the commander of the Sipo-SD for
Ukraine, Max Thomas, youths of both sexes (ages ten to eighteen) were considered either criminally suspect or racially valuable and the lowest-level district offices across Ukraine were to seize them. During November and December , the local gendarme offices began screening Zhytomyr’s youths in a
systematic kidnapping campaign known in Nazi circles as the ‘‘Heu Aktion’’
(literally, a collective harvesting of hay), a campaign that Heinrich Himmler
endorsed in his September  speech to SS-police leaders at Hegewald. Although Thomas had specified that the lowest age to target should be ten-yearolds, the gendarme lieutenant in Koziatyn revealed in his report that ‘‘criminal’’ children under the age of ten were also being held in the nearby youth
camp.80 The only new schools that the Germans established in the region were
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for the racially valuable, kidnapped Ukrainians and the Volksdeutsche, who
were taught useful labor skills and inculcated with the Nazi ideology.
On the other hand, the commissars supported Ukrainian cultural performances. In the capital city of Zhytomyr, Commissar Magass approved the existence of a Ukrainian club that presented a popular cabaret and variety show
for German and Ukrainian audiences.81 In Vinnytsia, City Commissar Fritz
Margenfeld promoted Ukrainian entertainment for the German troops by
forming a city ballet, orchestra, and theater.82 In Haisyn, Ukrainian actors performed Gogol, and local artists painted the sets. At the same time, the Germans
tried to control the productions by forcing the actors to learn German plays
like Hermann Sudermann’s Johannesfeuer, by placing local German talent in the
productions, and by taking over the direction of the Ukrainian productions.83
Mostly, the Germans allowed Ukrainians to perform because the Germans desired entertainment. In a patronizing way, they found the local folk customs
amusing and believed that permitting some forms of cultural expression would
go a long way toward placating and motivating the locals. They hardly held sincere hopes for the development of a strong Ukrainian culture, especially one
that might lead to an independence movement or harbor other resistance activities.
This type of German-Ukrainian ‘‘cultural’’ interaction coexisted with violent
Nazi practices against the population, including the regular public hangings
of Ukrainians in Zhytomyr’s Haymarket during  and .84 The persistence of Ukrainian culture prompted one official from Rosenberg’s ministry
who traveled through the region to comment on the bizarre juxtaposition of a
semitolerant attitude toward Ukrainian cultural activities alongside severe German methods of repression, describing the entire scenario a sham.85
Religion
Local policy toward Ukrainian religion took a more divergent course during the occupation. Most of Zhytomyr’s population identified themselves as
belonging to either the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church. The Roman
and Greek Catholic churches were present in the region, though the Roman
Catholic was viewed suspiciously as ‘‘Polish’’ and the Greek Catholic (Uniate)
Church as a western Ukrainian ‘‘outside’’ movement. Among the various Christian Orthodox factions that sprang up during the war, the two largest ones were
the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church centered in Kiev and the Russian Autonomous Church with its patriarch in Moscow.86 In December  the Germans
allowed for the revival of the Autocephalous Church by appointing Bishop Poli The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
karp (Sikorsky) the ‘‘Temporary Administrator of the Orthodox Autocephalous
Church in the Liberated Lands of Ukraine.’’ 87 The new council at Kiev appointed Bishop Fotii (Tymoshchuk) to Vinnytsia, and placed a second bishop,
Hryhorii (Ohiichuk), in the city of Zhytomyr.88 In May  Koch’s deputies
in Rivne announced that in addition to the Autocephalous Church under Polikarp that the Autonomous Church was allowed to exist under the leadership
of Bishop Aleksii.
At the regional level, Commissar Klemm and the district commissars shut
down the former oblast offices of Ukrainian religion and education. The commander of the Security Police for Ukraine, Max Thomas, instructed his SS and
police leader for Zhytomyr, Otto Hellwig, that no organized religious activity
should grow beyond the regional level because it could serve as a facade for
the Ukrainian underground. The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church
had openly supported the OUN-B’s declaration of independence in July ,
and German policy toward Ukrainian nationalism had changed to a blanket
condemnation of the movement, leading to the systematic murder of its local
leaders and sympathizers.89 Klemm, who did not want the police to interfere in
Ukrainian religious activities, informed the commissars that they should look
out for priests who carried false certificates; they should force other priests to
register and sign an oath that only religious, not political, issues would be discussed at meetings. Simultaneously, Klemm asked the commissars to publicly
promote religious freedom in order to avoid civil unrest.90
Although widespread and powerful, the resurrected religiosity was not a
source of broad social cohesion linking the region’s villages, towns, and cities.
As was true of other aspects of daily life and occupation administration, the
religious setting in the rural areas differed significantly from that of the larger
towns. While the popular revival of the church continued to develop rather
spontaneously and independently in the countryside, Ukrainian leaders in the
cities of Zhytomyr and Vinnytsia, who were negotiating their own nationalist
and personal agendas with the Nazis, tried to use the popular force of religion to expand their own power base and test the limits of Nazi rule.91 In late
May  Reich Commissar Koch threatened to shut down both churches because of the infighting and decreed that he alone had the authority to appoint
bishops. He also empowered the commissars to dismiss bishops and priests if
these religious leaders posed a local threat to security and order.92
However, beyond Zhytomyr’s city limits, the amount of religious freedom
that the rural commissars granted to the population varied from district to district. At the time of Easter in , church bells could be heard in one region but
not in another; some churches were closed and others were not; some UkrainiThe Zhytomyr General Commissariat

ans were forced to work on religious holidays and others were not. The dissimulation and contradictions of Nazi policy were especially evident when in June
, after months of deliberations and drafts, Rosenberg presented his ‘‘Tolerance Edict.’’ This so-called decree of ‘‘tolerance’’ actually placed greater restrictions on religious organization and granted local commissars the power to
remove anyone whose religious practices entered into politics.93 Until Rosenberg’s edict, that is, for over a year, most Ukrainians had enjoyed some sense of
religious freedom, but after June  the German version of ‘‘tolerance’’ became synonymous with heightened restrictions and regional inconsistencies.
In late , when Koch pressured the commissars to search their districts for
more forced laborers and war matériel, religious holidays and Sundays became
working days, and the commissars confiscated church bells for the war effort
and offered churches and cloisters to the Wehrmacht for quartering troops.
The commissars failed to create uniform cultural policies beyond their own
districts and harness the full potential of the Ukrainian population to meet
German aims. Instead, like their predecessors in the military administration,
they turned to brute practices of force and intimidation to extract what they
could from the Ukrainians. Even when it seemed as if some concessions were
being made, such as religious toleration, the same German authority would not
hesitate to lash out at the population for not fulfilling labor quotas or for refusing to hand over all their livestock. From the perspective of the Ukrainians,
especially in the year , there was little difference between the Bolsheviks
and the Nazis. Indeed, in September  a Ukrainian man in Vinnytsia compared Nazi labor drives to the Reich with Bolshevik deportations to Siberia; by
an order of the Gebietskommissar he was publicly hanged for making this antiGerman statement.94
The civil administration did not enjoy exclusive power over Ukraine. In Zhytomyr the commissars projected a public image of omnipotence, but behind
this veneer of total control was a splintered structure that left the day-to-day
management and implementation of German policy in the hands of a few Reich
officials who represented Rosenberg’s ministry, Himmler’s police forces, Göring’s economic and agricultural specialists, the military, and private business
ventures. The multiple command structure under which the local leaders operated was on paper confusing and inefficient; yet most leaders managed their
tasks under these circumstances. The power struggles of the Nazi elite materialized in the conflicting orders that they gave to their subordinates, fueling the inconsistent, contradictory regional practices. Yet the polycratic pattern of institutional relations found at the highest levels of Nazi rule was not
duplicated at the regional level. Additionally, the occupied territories in the

The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
East were simply too vast for the cumbersome bureaucracy in Berlin, Rivne, or
even Zhytomyr to exercise much effective supervision over individual Gebietskommissare.
There are more examples of cross-agency cooperation than of conflict in
the Zhytomyr region, examples that add up to more than individual attempts
by ambitious commissars and bureaucrats to gain recognition from above with
self-congratulatory memoranda. Indeed, the mere shortage of Reich manpower ‘‘in the field’’ necessitated not only the reliance on indigenous collaborators but also a sharing of resources and personnel across German agencies.
Often cooperation grew out of the mere fact that, as was the case in Zhytomyr and Berdychiv, staff from different private and public agencies shared the
same outpost or office space.95 Cooperation can be found within most of the
leading Nazi campaigns implemented in the region: exploitation of agriculture, the persecution of the Jews, antipartisan warfare, and Nazi forced-labor
drives.96 However, cooperation did not mean that each agency shared an equal
role in the implementation of these leading policies. Indeed, Rosenberg’s commissars, who initially may have expected complete power over their districts,
quickly found that they had only a share of it.
Beginning in the late summer of , Rosenberg’s commissars teamed up
with Göring’s agricultural leaders and Himmler’s SS-police to protect the collective farms from Soviet partisan attackers. The commissars and local gendarme station leaders informed the Ukrainian collective farm leaders that the
farmers, in addition to working long days in the fields, had to form night
patrols to guard the fields and storage houses. If the Germans determined that
any damage or theft had occurred, hostages were taken, beginning with the
collective farm leader. The Order Police and Ukrainian Schutzmänner escorted
the hostages to the nearest SD office, which meant that the hostages were
interrogated, tortured, and usually sent to Germany as laborers, or killed.97
Thus, while the senior Reich policy-makers debated the fate and productivity
of Ukraine’s collective farms, a combination of local German agencies relied
on a now familiar formula for extracting food for the Reich and Wehrmacht
soldiers: cooperation with other German agencies, coordination of resources,
reliance on indigenous leaders and auxiliaries, and terror tactics.
During the course of the occupation, the Nazi abuse of Ukrainian forced
labor became one of the more dominant features of the commissars’ rule. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in Zhytomyr, about one in ten (ages thirteen
to fifty-five) were deported to Germany as forced laborers. The implementation of this program depended on the rather smooth collaboration of the regional leadership. The commissars played a central coordinating role, one that
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Koch had defined from the start. In Koch’s first decree as Reich commissar,
he ordered all able-bodied persons (no age or gender specified) to register for
work with the commissar’s labor office. Those who did not work for the Germans were punished and imprisoned.98
Ukrainian Forced Labor Inside and
Outside the Commissariat
In the Zhytomyr region there were demands for Ukrainian labor from two
sources: the regional construction projects, agriculture, and factory work; and
outside the region in the Reich. According to Rosenberg’s original administrative design, each commissar’s office housed a staff of technical experts and
engineers who would determine the labor needs for the local construction projects.99 In June  Klemm’s labor chief, Feierabend, complained about the
severe shortage of skilled labor in the region, a shortage that Klemm’s political
adviser attributed to the ‘‘resettlement’’ of Jews. Feierabend determined that a
total of , men and women had been deported to the Reich and ,
more were to follow them. With the current regional need for , workers
in the lumber industry and in the construction of airports, bridges, and canals,
it seemed unlikely at the going rate of deportation that the commissars would
be able to complete local projects. Nonetheless, he added, Klemm’s staff was
able to overcome the foreseen difficulties surrounding the construction of Hitler’s headquarters by the ‘‘complete and smooth cooperation of all agencies
involved.’’ 100
Because most of the local laborers were being deported to Germany, the
commissars in Zhytomyr were forced to abandon many of the regional construction projects. Local labor was also allotted to the major construction of the
autobahn, particularly the stretch of road being built around Hitler’s Vinnytsia headquarters. Rosenberg’s chiefs still managed to hold onto some laborers
who worked on their houses and offices. The scarcity of skilled labor was so
great that they also risked retaining Jews as personal dentists, craftsmen, carpenters, draftsmen, and mechanics and in other positions.101
In order to meet the outrageous labor quotas for the Reich, however, Hitler’s
plenipotentiary for labor, Fritz Sauckel, established regional teams of labor recruiters. In Zhytomyr there were five ‘‘Sauckel’’ recruiting commissioners assigned to the labor departments of the commissariat; one of these commissioners, named Groh, was posted at Novohrad-Volyns’kyi (Zviahel). In April
 Groh wrote to the SS and police leader of Novohrad-Volyns’kyi that he

The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
Ukrainian forced laborers being examined by a Wehrmacht doctor prior to
their deportation to the Reich,  (Ullstein Bild #)
needed the gendarme posts in Mar’ianivka, Baranivka, and Polianka to be reinforced with more militia. The indigenous collective farm leaders and mayors
had not met the latest quota of laborers, so Groh planned for the use of more
force to obtain the laborers. After additional exchanges between the chief of
the labor department of the commissar’s office and the local German agricultural leader (La-Führer), , persons were seized by the gendarmerie and the
entire force of local auxiliaries, in toto about  men.
The La-Führer assisted Sauckel’s commissioners by informing them of any
‘‘excess’’ labor at the state and collective farms.102 The district commissar’s
office, with the help of the police, held hostages from villages until a sufficient number of laborers could be gathered.103 Meanwhile, the commissariat
propaganda office introduced a new campaign, publishing so-called letters
from the Reich. In a widely circulated article printed in Ukrainian newspapers,
‘‘What Are the Ukrainians Writing from Germany?,’’ the Germans ‘‘quoted’’
from Ukrainian letters that ‘‘we all sang to music on the trains to work. . . .
There is great camaraderie with the Germans. . . . There is a lot of freedom and
shopping’’; a Ukrainian Ostarbeiter is also reported to have written: ‘‘I live in a
hotel room where everything is sparkling clean, I eat meat and jam, everything
is abundant.’’ 104 But this propaganda effort could not counteract concurrent
The Zhytomyr General Commissariat

Ukrainian forced laborers say good-bye to loved ones at the train station, 
(Ullstein Bild #)
Nazi recruiting methods and the more believable rumors of the time circulating among Ukrainians, such as that workers who were sent from NovohradVolyns’kyi to Germany ‘‘were shot immediately and turned into soap.’’ 105
When Sauckel’s agents or Rosenberg’s commissars received a labor quota
for their districts, they employed whatever means available to capture and intern the Ukrainians who were then deported to the Reich. Numerous studies
have described the sinister methods used by Sauckel’s agents, such as surrounding movie houses and churches and grabbing everyone inside, as well as
snatching people on the streets and in marketplaces.106 Once the laborers had
been seized, the commissars worked closely with the SS and police in managing the transit camps in advance of the laborers’ transport to the Reich.
Klemm’s labor leader, Feierabend, also found that camps were the best ‘‘solution’’ for Ukrainians who failed to appear for labor assignments and for ‘‘homeless adults.’’ At the ‘‘workers’ educational camp’’ at Koziatyn, one of the largest
in the region, the district commissar’s office of labor assigned ‘‘work-shy elements’’ (of both sexes) to forced labor.107 The commissar’s staff provided a list
of the ‘‘work-shy elements’’ to the chief of the gendarmerie who, until ,
relied largely on Ukrainian Schutzmänner to find them. Any Jews who arrived
at the camps were, by order of the commissar, handed over to the district SS
and police leader.108 At the beginning of May , Koziatyn District Commissar Wolfgang Steudel and the SD chief in Berdychiv discussed the future of the
Koziatyn camp (Arbeitserziehungslager), and decided that the camp be cleared of
its ‘‘lazy and work-shy elements.’’ The ‘‘unfit’’ prisoners were given over to the
SD and killed—whereas the available skilled laborers were assigned to the German railway and to private firms.109
The commissars and SS-police also jointly managed the growing ‘‘orphan’’
problem in the region. The labor camps housed orphans and ‘‘suspicious’’
youths.110 In August  the Befehlshaber der Sipo-SD (BdS) for Ukraine, Max
Thomas, wrote to Zhytomyr’s Sipo-SD chief (KdS), Franz Razesberger, that
as ‘‘preventive criminal measures against youths,’’ children should be seized
and placed in hard labor camps that were supervised by the commissar’s labor
office. The gendarme leader in Koziatyn agreed that police measures needed
to be taken against orphans; many under the age of ten years were arriving on
trains at the Koziatyn juncture and wandering through the area. In the neighboring district of Ruzhyn, the German gendarme leader also reported at this
time that about  orphans had been seized.111 At the youth camps, youngsters who had ‘‘racially worthless’’ characteristics were trained to obey the Germans, work hard, count to , read German traffic signs, and learn a manual
labor trade. Others became candidates for possible ‘‘Germanization.’’ 112
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Though the Nazi terror was systematic, the Nazi apparatus as a whole was
unstable, a phenomenon dubbed by some scholars as ‘‘organized chaos.’’ The
commissars were forced to rely increasingly on Himmler’s police forces to
secure their power. When the commissars, beginning with General Commissar Klemm, challenged the SS, they were replaced or brought into line. The
growing power of the SS and police forces in the region was not unique to
Ukraine. In Belorussia the increase of SS power culminated with the appointment in October  of the higher SS and police leader, SS Major General
Hans von Gottberg, to the position of general commissar after the assassination of Rosenberg’s general commissar, Wilhelm Kube.113 The district commissars in Zhytomyr who did not immediately cooperate with the SS learned from
the fate of their own general commissar, Klemm, that a direct challenge to SS
power might result in a ‘‘dishonorable’’ resignation and worse—relocation to
the front. Klemm’s fate offers an illuminating example of the general outcome
of confrontations between regional commissars and the SS-police leaders. It
also provides some explanation for the local trend of cooperation or perhaps,
in this particular case, of accommodation.
The Case of General Commissar Klemm and the SS-Police
Kurt Klemm’s self-image as general commissar was fashioned after the
model of highbrow British imperialists in India. But his romantic, naïve hopes
of a German ‘‘India’’ in Ukraine were quickly dashed when he arrived and found
a city and region ravaged by war and a population that was not quite as docile
and diligent as was stereotypically portrayed by the Germans. Klemm was also
the quintessential Nazi leader who demanded strict administrative procedures
and adherence to the hierarchy. To Klemm’s disappointment, he found that his
title and rank alone would not secure his authority. Power in the Zhytomyr region was attached to policy, and the commissars were not charged with the
leading role in the most high profile campaigns: the ethnic German program,
the ‘‘Final Solution,’’ the headquarters and autobahn construction projects, and
antipartisan warfare. These leading policies were commanded chiefly by the
SS-police, the Nazi Party, the Wehrmacht, and Organization Todt. The commissars’ authority rested on their willingness to cooperate by coordinating their
rivals’ policies.
Klemm realized the limitations of his and the commissars’ power within the
first months of his reign, when he expressed his frustration over relations with
the SS-police. He was not a moralist; rather, he resented the fact that the SS
could act unilaterally and that the ‘‘Final Solution’’ exacerbated existing labor

The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
shortages by eliminating the most skilled sector of the population, the Jews.
Klemm and his political and technical advisers wanted to rebuild sections of
the city of Zhytomyr, including its streetcars, but they lacked the skilled workers. Klemm complained to his superiors in Rosenberg’s ministry about the
labor shortage and on more than one occasion indirectly blamed the shortage
on the Reich’s anti-Jewish policies.114
In May  Klemm met with Reich Commissar Koch, Higher SS and Police
Leader for Ukraine Prützmann, and Reich Minister Rosenberg at Rivne.115 Earlier he had written disapprovingly of the independent actions of the SS in Zhytomyr, but at this high-level meeting he decided to voice his complaint again.
Prützmann politely expressed his regret about the difficulties or misunderstandings that had occurred in the establishment of the administration, but the
issue was dropped. Dissatisfied with this outcome, Klemm circulated a memorandum on  May about the local police, who were becoming too involved in
‘‘guiding political currents in the region.’’ Prützmann’s subordinate in Zhytomyr, Hellwig, responded by ordering the local police to ‘‘not get mixed up in
leading purely political tasks.’’ 116 At the same time, Hellwig complained to
his superiors that Klemm was uncooperative and even too ‘‘humane.’’ When
Himmler arrived at his newly constructed bunkers at the outskirts of Zhytomyr, he summoned Klemm and sternly reprimanded him. The next month
Klemm quietly resigned his position. On  September  the official German
newspaper in Ukraine, the Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung, published a brief explanation about the personnel changes in Zhytomyr; it stated that Klemm was on
vacation, and two of his deputies had moved farther east to Nikolaev, Ukraine.
Months later Klemm received official commendations from Hitler for his good
work in the East, but was denied permission to wear his general’s uniform in
public, to his great disappointment.117
Just in case there was any lasting confusion among Klemm’s subordinates
about the relationship between the SS and commissars, two specific actions
were taken in the immediate wake of Klemm’s departure in August .
Klemm’s replacement, SS-Brigadeführer and Deputy Gauleiter of Westmark
Ernst Leyser (who joined the Nazi Party and SS in ), investigated the district commissars’ record regarding the ‘‘Final Solution’’; he found that his subordinates had cooperated with the SS and police in the implementation of this
policy. Leyser, who later complained about the local effects of Nazi antipartisan
warfare, kept quiet about Nazi anti-Jewish measures. Furthermore, Rosenberg
and Himmler issued a joint memorandum to the regional leaders in the commissariat and SS-police defining the official lines of authority between their
two respective agencies. Higher SS and Police Leader Prützmann and his reThe Zhytomyr General Commissariat

gional SS and police leaders (in Zhytomyr, Hellwig) were to carry out Himmler’s wishes. The general commissar could issue orders to individual members
of the regional police in the Schupo (Schutzpolizei) and gendarmerie but not
to the SS and police district leader (SS- und Polizeigebietsführer). Orders to
the Ukrainian Schutzmannschaften had to go through the German gendarmes.
The commissars could direct the police in labor recruiting raids, but they had
to employ them selectively.118 General Commissar Leyser instructed the commissars to pursue their own duties and to stay clear of SS activities. In effect,
the commissars lost direct control over their regional police forces.
In the end, the regional commissars, who had minimal resources and
worked under extreme pressure from superiors to meet quotas of all kinds, had
little choice but to work with other German government agencies even if there
existed some strong emotional crosscurrents of animosity and rivalry.119 They
found that their strength lay in the central coordinating role that they played
in implementing Nazi policy at the lowest levels. The commissar’s office was
not strong enough politically nor was it well enough staffed to enjoy exclusive control over its district; the prestige that the local chiefs sought, indeed
their power, depended on the kind of cross-agency cooperation that occurred
in Zhytomyr.

The Zhytomyr General Commissariat
Chapter 6 The General Commissariat’s Machinery
of Destruction The Holocaust in the
Countryside and Jewish Forced Labor,
1942–1943
We were six in our family. I had two sisters and two brothers.
I tried to escape from the Germans. . . . I walked over 500 kilometers begging for food and shelter, from Minsk to Berdychiv,
to Koziatyn and then Vinnytsia. Many old Ukrainian women
took me in. I was their servant. Some betrayed me. Others did
not. I did not look like a Jew, so I survived.
—Eva Abramovna Frankel’ (b. Berdychiv, 1919)
In his seminal work on the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg introduced
the metaphor of a machine to explain the Nazi administrative process behind
the ‘‘Final Solution.’’ The key operator of this machine, as Hilberg demonstrated, was the middle-ranking bureaucrat, who ‘‘no less than the highest superior was aware of currents and possibilities.’’ Like the Berlin-centered bureaucrats, the regional leaders in Ukraine ‘‘displayed a striking path-finding
ability in the absence of directives, a congruity of activities without jurisdictional guidelines, a fundamental comprehension of the task even when there
were no explicit communications.’’ 1 When it came to Jewish policy, regional
and district leaders understood their superiors’ wishes, turned Nazi aims into
concrete plans of action, and in many instances bloodied their own hands in
the implementation of the Holocaust. They developed killing methods and administrative networks in the  massacres of over , Jews in the Zhytomyr region and continued to refine their mass murder apparatus until the final
days of the occupation.
During the second phase of the Nazi occupation, when the civil administration was in place, mass executions of Jews continued, but with very few exceptions killing actions did not reach the scale of several thousands as they often
had in . Since it had become quite clear that Himmler and his police organizations had the upper hand in determining the final fate of the Jews, Himmler’s
SS-policemen and Rosenberg’s commissars simply sought a modus operandi
in the field. In early  one of the ‘‘insiders’’ among Rosenberg’s advisers on
Jewish policy, Erhard Wetzel, corresponded with Himmler’s deputies about the
need for practical coordination between district commissars and the police.2
Himmler’s SS and Order Police units maintained overall control of the policy, but its implementation, now that nearly all of the mobile killing forces
under Otto Rasch and Hans-Adolf Prützmann (Friedrich Jeckeln’s successor)
and large army security divisions had moved eastward, required the combined
effort of several stationary police and non-police agencies, particularly the gendarmerie, district commissars, agricultural leaders, economic specialists, and
foresters.3 Unlike the  mobile killing sweeps that emanated from Zhytomyr’s centers, the massacres of Jews during  and  were left almost
exclusively to local German and non-German police as well as other Reich personnel stationed in the region. The outstanding exception to this pattern was
the involvement of the Reich Security Service (RSD), Hitler’s special forces. To
prepare for the Führer’s arrival to Vinnytsia, the Reich Security Service initiated
and oversaw a thorough ‘‘cleansing’’ of the area in and around Hitler’s designated compound. The Reich Security Service drove the timing and intensity
of the Holocaust experienced by Vinnytsia’s Jews in the spring and summer of
.4
This chapter explores how the machinery of the ‘‘Final Solution’’ functioned
in the commissariat administration. It is organized thematically and roughly
chronologically, beginning with an overview of the rural killing machinery of
SS-policemen and district commissars, and concluding with case studies of
Jewish forced labor in the region, specifically in the construction of the autobahn and the Nazi leaders’ field headquarters.
The Local SS-Police Apparatus
Germans, Ukrainians, and Volksdeutsche
The prominent position of the local commissar meant that his involvement
in the Holocaust was unavoidable; in fact, some individual commissars distinguished themselves at the execution sites by shooting Jews. However, the
shooting squads consisted of personnel from one of the region’s six Sipo-SD
outposts or the stationary gendarme offices.5 Some of these ‘‘shooters’’ had
firsthand experience in the  massacres. Members of Einsatzkommando 
(EK) staffed the Sipo-SD office in Zhytomyr, and the Vinnytsia office. The
Sipo-SD officers reported to the region’s commander of the Sipo-SD, Franz
Razesberger, who arrived in January .6 The six SD stations that Razesberger
oversaw were located in Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Berdychiv, Ovruch, Mazyr, and
Haisyn. By July  the rural police structure had grown to twenty-five SS The Machinery of Destruction
police district stations, one for each Gebiet, with eighty smaller subdistrict
gendarme posts. In addition, six mobile Order Police battalions and two horse
squadrons reported to the region’s four gendarme captaincies at Mazyr, Berdychiv, Vinnytsia, and Zhytomyr.
In the SS and police hierarchy, the Ukrainian auxiliaries were at the bottom of the chain of command structure. Mostly Ukrainians filled the ranks of
the rural auxiliaries, known as Schutzmannschaften, led by German gendarme
post leaders. In addition, at least six mobile units of auxiliaries swept through
the region in – (three Ukrainian battalions, one Lithuanian, one Latvian,
and one ethnic German).7
The German gendarmes and their Ukrainian auxiliaries were responsible for
securing the commissariat administration in the rural areas that had not been
‘‘cleansed’’ by the military. On  December  General Commissar Klemm
ordered the district commissars to dissolve the Ukrainian militia. In his own
attempt to assume some direct control over the policemen, he ordered the local
German gendarmerie and Schutzpolizei to carry out this task (which they were
doing anyway according to orders that came down the SS-police command
structure). The new recruits, the Schutzmänner, were given military-style training, including marching and sports. They learned the basics of ‘‘Prussian order
and cleanliness.’’ The German gendarme commander for the region, Senior
Lieutenant Hans Leberecht von Bredow, told his new recruits, ‘‘The best training is by doing!’’ 8
In early , Bredow’s boss, the commander of the Order Police for
Ukraine, Otto von Oelhafen, explained more precisely what they were authorized to do. German gendarmes would not need any formal approval to carry
out executions, he wrote, in instances ‘‘in which it is entirely clear why the execution is to be done.’’ 9 Only a brief report of the event, he wrote, is to be written afterward and circulated to all of the district’s SS and police offices. At this
time, it was ‘‘entirely clear’’ to Germans leaders in Zhytomyr what was ‘‘to be
done’’ with the Jews.
In the commissariat, the administrative machinery of the Holocaust operated at two levels. For the larger actions, such as the final massacres of Jews
in Berdychiv, the district SS-police chiefs met with the Gebietskommissare,
local army commanders, and an official from the nearest Sipo-SD outpost.
They planned the killing action and made the necessary preparations, including the assignment of ‘‘executioners.’’ The other pattern involved fewer victims
but was geographically more far-reaching and societally more invasive. During the regular patrols of rural areas, or in response to local requests, Ukrainian Schutzmänner and German gendarmes combed the region and uncovered
The Machinery of Destruction

Jews in hiding. In what became a routine police ‘‘matter,’’ district SS-police
and gendarme leaders reported the shootings of individual Jews ex post facto
to their gendarme headquarters in Vinnytsia, Berdychiv, Mazyr, Korosten’, and
Zhytomyr.10
The Nazi Search for Jews in the Countryside
Among the twenty-six districts that eventually comprised the Zhytomyr region, one of the few surviving collections of gendarme reports stemmed from
the Koziatyn and Ruzhyn districts. According to these German reports, gendarmes and Ukrainian Schutzmänner scoured the area for Jews in the summer
and fall of  and continued to find and shoot Jewish families and individuals
who were found in hovels, fields, and forests in . The Koziatyn district contained three gendarme stations (Koziatyn, Samhorodok, and Pohrebyshche)
staffed by a total of thirty-four German gendarmes who arrived between October  and May .11 The number of Schutzmänner fluctuated, but peaked
in September  at  men, not including a closed unit of  Ukrainian
railway guards and trainees who cycled through Pohrebyshche’s police school,
where they were instructed, according to one lesson title, that ‘‘the Jews must
be destroyed.’’ 12
In Koziatyn, as elsewhere in the Eastern Territories, the Germans relied on
Ukrainian auxiliaries and ethnic Germans to do the dirty work of the Holocaust. Ukrainian police, most of whom were unmarried, along with former
agricultural workers and day laborers, conducted the searching and plundering operations. Reich German SS-police officials, who lacked the personnel
and preferred not to subject themselves to the unhygienic, disease-ridden conditions of the camps, assigned Ukrainians to guard the camps. One of the region’s Sipo-SD-controlled camps was the so-called workers educational camp
in Koziatyn, where about  Jews had been confined in  along with other
prisoners deemed politically suspect.13 One Jewish survivor of the camp, Nina
Glozman, remembered the excessive beatings by a Ukrainian guard named
Godzikovski, who forced her to clean the toilets.14
In June , when Koziatyn’s SS and police leader, Heinrich Behrens, ordered the execution of Koziatyn’s remaining Jews, who were being held at
the barracks in Pohrebyshche, the Ukrainian auxiliaries translated the German
orders to the Jews, forced them to undress, and stood ready as an SD commando from Berdychiv fired its deadly shots. On  July  Behrens sent a
memorandum to the gendarme leaders at Pohrebyshche and Samhorodok stat-
 The Machinery of Destruction
ing that he was aware of additional Jews hiding in the villages and forests and
warned that all villages must report the presence of Jews. If German gendarmes
or Ukrainian policemen found Jews, ‘‘the entire village should be punished.’’ 15
One month later, in August , after intense searches by the Ukrainian police
and German gendarmes,  more Jews were gathered at the barracks.
Behrens telephoned the SD post in Berdychiv and agreed to assist the SD in
the killing action by providing about forty Ukrainian police and some German
soldiers who were stationed nearby. When the SD commando force arrived at
the local airfield, Behrens was there to greet them and then drive the killing
squad to the Talymynivka ravine, which was the execution site near the barracks.16
Ukrainian farmers policed their own villages by telling the Germans the
whereabouts of Jews. In the late summer of , a Ukrainian farmer named
Tymoshchyk reported to German gendarme station leader Lieutenant Munch
in Koziatyn that some Jews were hiding in the village of Kordelivka. Munch
immediately deployed to the area a unit of Ukrainian police led by a German
gendarme captain. After a futile search of Kordelivka, the policemen departed
from the village by foot. As they walked along the road outside of the village,
they spotted some people hiding among the corn stalks. The Jewish families
Pintel and Bravermann (one man, three women, and four children) tried desperately to elude the police. The Ukrainian and German policemen grabbed
them and ruthlessly shot them on the spot.17 Not long after this incident, at
the end of September , Behrens reported to the district commissar that
except for those in hiding, the Koziatyn district had been cleared of its Jews;
they had just given over the last eighteen Jewish men and three women to the
SD for ‘‘resettlement.’’ 18
Yet in  the gendarmes and Ukrainian Schutzmänner continued their intense search for Jews. As in the case of the Kordelivka massacre, SS and police
district leaders in Koziatyn and Ruzhyn regularly reported that Jewish families
(mainly women and small children) had been found hiding in haystacks and
hovels, and were ‘‘shot while trying to escape.’’ 19 Meanwhile, the local police
pressured Ukrainians to disclose where Jews were hiding. In one outstanding
example from Pohrebyshche, a small group of Jews managed to survive for over
a year in hiding, though it is not clear how much help they received from villagers. As the German gendarme station leader Bruno Mayrhofer described it:
On  May , . hours, following a confidential report,  Jews, that is
 men,  women and  children were flushed out of a well-camouflaged hole
The Machinery of Destruction

in the ground in an open field not far from the post here, and all of them were
shot while trying to escape. This case concerned Jews from Pohrebyshche
who had lived in this hole in the ground for almost a year. The Jews did not
have anything else in their possession except their tattered clothing. The
few items of food that they possessed and lay strewn about the camp were
given to the village poor. As well was the still somewhat usable clothing.
The burial was carried out immediately on the spot.20
For individual Jews and small Jewish families, who were hunted like animals by the German-led police forces, survival depended almost entirely on the
local population. Their only source of food was the local peasantry. Starving
and desperate, Jewish fugitives stole the food under cover of night. Some charitable peasants provided food. Others exploited the dire plight of the Jews by
demanding large sums of money or valuables in exchange for food or shelter.
Because some German administrators continued secretly to employ skilled
Jews, police orders were also circulated in June  and again in early spring
 that any remaining Jews must be identified. In the June  order, Berdychiv’s district gendarme captain warned that refusing to hand over Jews who
continued to work in the administration obstructed their ‘‘resettlement’’ and
would result in punishment by the SS and police court for ‘‘Befehlsverweigerung’’ (refusal to follow orders). Then in March  similar instructions were
handed down from Berdychiv to Koziatyn, and the local Koziatyn gendarme
leader abandoned the ‘‘resettlement’’ euphemism, ordering that the local police
must hand over all remaining Jews and then make sure that the ‘‘pits were prepared.’’ 21
Here and there individual Ukrainians did try within their limited means
to help Jews, and in doing so they risked their lives as well as those of their
neighbors. Indeed, the Germans carried out collective measures against entire villages if Jews had not been handed over to the Ukrainian and German
police.22 In the city orphanage at Zhytomyr, a Ukrainian aide and her superior
concealed Jewish children with new Ukrainian identities; one four-year-old girl
was adopted by Ukrainian parents who knew she was Jewish.23 Semen Umanskii’s family survived the harsh winters in the forests near Brailov because nonJewish friends in the surrounding villages gave them food and a place to sleep.24
Some Ukrainians who lived near the forced labor camps of DG IV brought food
to the prisoners and signaled when a massacre was imminent because they saw
the death pits being prepared nearby.25 Only weeks before the Red Army recaptured villages in the Koziatyn district, the local SS and police leader Heinrich
Behrens reported that a Ukrainian woman had been arrested for sheltering Jews
 The Machinery of Destruction
Announcement of the Gebietskommissar of Berdychiv
forbidding the sheltering of Jews. Headed simply
‘‘Announcement,’’ the text reads: ‘‘() Every mayor
and village elder with the help of the local police
must arrest and hand over to the SD-police in
Berdychiv each Jewish person from another locality,
especially those who remained here after
 December . () All local persons are
forbidden to shelter or hide Jews, especially those
from other localities. () In each instance in which
it is found out that Jewish persons stayed without
permission, the entire family that sheltered them
will be punished with death. () The same
punishment will be applied to any mayors or village
elders who do not immediately follow the obligation
under point §.’’ The announcement is signed
‘‘District Commissar.’’ (Anti-Jewish Nazi and
Collaborationist Leaflets and Announcements Made
and Posted during the Nazi Occupation of Ukraine,
–, RG ., U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum, courtesy of the Judaica Institute, Kiev)
in Vchoraishe.26 These rather few but significant cases demonstrate that some
Ukrainians courageously tried to help Jews.
Indigenous Police Forces and the Holocaust
Their Size, Influence, and Ideological Training
How extensive was the local police’s role in the Holocaust during  and
? The Germans increased the number of Ukrainian auxiliaries in the countryside, most markedly in the spring of . After the big recruiting drives of
August  and initiation ceremonies of September , the headcount of
Schutzmänner in the entire Zhytomyr region was ,.27 Later in April ,
after the Germans forced more Ukrainian men to join, it jumped to , auxiliaries, while the number of German gendarme leaders was about , men.28
During  and  the number of Ukrainian police in the region nearly
tripled.
The dramatic increase in the number of local policemen in the late summer
The Machinery of Destruction

and fall of  stemmed mainly from a local German policy to employ more
Ukrainians in antipartisan warfare, especially in the patrolling of forests and
the countryside, where Germans were most vulnerable. This development did
not represent a shift in priorities, but rather a German response to local conditions in Zhytomyr and other areas in the East where partisan warfare was on
the rise. The primary ‘‘enemy’’ in the minds of the Nazis remained first and
foremost the Jews, whom the Ukrainian auxiliaries could continue to uncover
during partisan raids and whom the Germans promoted as the core of the Bolshevik insurgency.
Surviving documentation does not reveal exactly who was carrying out the
shooting of Jews in the most remote outposts of the Reich. However, Ukrainian
policemen were charged with the patrolling of villages without German supervision, and they were empowered to kill persons whom German leaders defined as enemies of the state, for example, Jews. Another case stemming from a
Koziatyn district police office sheds additional light on the role of the Ukrainian
police. Samhorodok gendarme leader Josef Richter nominated Schutzmann
Unterführer Vasyl’ Palamarchuk for a service award because of his notable contribution in the ‘‘resettlement of Jews’’ there in June  and in subsequent
searches for Jews in hiding. According to Richter, Palamarchuk volunteered
for the ‘‘special actions’’ and in carrying them out displayed an exemplary
daredevilness and enthusiasm that substantially motivated his fellow Schutzmänner.29 In the ‘‘resettlement’’ action that Richter referred to (which occurred
on  June ), German gendarmes and Ukrainian police killed the elderly and
sick Jews of the Samhorodok ghetto. An SD execution squad gunned down the
remainder (about  persons).30
The Germans did not as a consistent policy place the Ukrainian police in
the role of executioners. There were a few controversial cases—for example,
at Radomyshl’—in which the Germans used Ukrainian militia to shoot Jewish
children, a task that some German shooters preferred to relegate to Ukrainians.31 Still, German security police and gendarme leaders tended to direct the
operation and do the shooting. To be sure, the SS-police effectively trained
many Ukrainians (and ethnic Germans) to be reliable ruffians and killers at the
death camps and ghettos in Poland.32 But in general the Germans were wary
of arming Ukrainian police auxiliaries in the occupation administration, many
of whom had not been carefully screened. The Germans realized that a Ukrainian aide might misuse his weapon or desert his post and join the partisans
(and many did). Moreover, armed Germans were not inclined to give over their
primary source of power—the gun. Thus the Germans placed themselves in a
contradictory position of depending on the loyalty of Ukrainians whom they
 The Machinery of Destruction
increasingly alienated. Both the collaborators and the general populace understood that German leaders were capable of unleashing mass murder to an unprecedented degree, and that upon complete destruction of the Jews the Germans might very well seek to destroy all Ukrainians.33
In order to bring the growing force of Ukrainian and ethnic
German auxiliaries into the Nazi campaign and make them more ideologically
reliable, on  June  Himmler instructed his subordinates to focus on
the ‘‘political training of the Schutzmannschaft.’’ He and Rosenberg agreed to
establish formal educational training schools for the Schutzmannschaft; the
schools were located in Korosten’ and Koziatyn. In this agreement they outlined the goals of the indoctrination program, with an emphasis on ‘‘stirring
up the strong instinctual anti-Semitism of the eastern peoples’’ by drawing attention to ‘‘the Jewish face of Bolshevism’’ and other Nazi theories of Jewish
world conspiracies.34 On  August  the chief of the police training office
in Ukraine provided the Order Police headquarters in Zhytomyr with the ideological substance of the program, set forth in an essay entitled Das neue Werden
im Osten Europas (The New Development in Eastern Europe):
A large part of the blood sacrifice of the German people was given up over
the centuries in the incessant battles over the borders of Eastern Europe.
What is happening today in the East is already part of the New Order of
Europe. German politics in the East are inspired by the memory of Eastern
Europe as a land of settlement. When the Germanic-German colonists and
merchants penetrated Eastern European countries over the course of centuries, they were called by the rulers of the peoples who lived there. They did
not bring robbery and destruction, fire and murder, death and ruin; instead,
they successfully created from the fertile fields blooming cities, outstanding buildings, and artistic [and] scholarly works of the highest value.
By contrast, the culture-negating and people-destroying forces of Bolshevism have only failed to promote the cultures that were there, and they
have prevented in every way the free development of European peoples in
Russia. Because the Bolshevism that the Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian,
Belorussian, and Ukrainian people were confronted with was not European,
and also not actually Russian in character, but Jewish and Asian in its nature. The Jews brought Bolshevism to power through a tyranny of terror,
hunger, crime. . . . The current war being led by the Germans and Italians
will mean the destruction of Bolshevism and with it the liberation of the
people of Eastern Europe.35
The Machinery of Destruction

The excerpt of this essay is revealing in several respects. For one, it shows how
major themes of Nazi ideology and indeed of Himmler and Hitler’s thinking
seeped into the minds and indoctrination programs of the regional SS-police
offices in the Eastern Territories. Germany’s history of eastward migration was
distorted to justify Nazi Germany’s conquest of the region, and even its application of genocidal policies. The German colonist was portrayed as the source
of everything good: a thriving economy, flourishing landscapes, and masterful
cultural monuments. This rosy portrait of European superiority as essentially
German was contrasted with the destructive other—the ‘‘Bolshevik Jew.’’ 36 The
German appeal to Ukrainians centered on the notion that the Nazis waged a
war of liberation in Eastern Europe by defeating ‘‘Judeo-Bolshevism.’’
Down the chain of command, regional SS-police leaders were asked to report on the results of Nazi ideological indoctrination of indigenous police
forces. In October  Reserve Lieutenant of the Schutzpolizei Albrecht in
Berdychiv responded. Albrecht trained ethnic German and Ukrainian commanders of the Schutzmannschaften in Berdychiv. The necessity of looking
after the political training of the police, he wrote, had been known to the Germans since early  and had been a constant in their program. As part of
this program, Albrecht, with the help of the district commissar’s office and
the German tourist board, distributed colorful posters, picture postcards, and
maps of Germany. They observed that the police recruits preferred the images
of modern German cities to romanticized rural landscapes. Aside from this,
Albrecht wrote, the Germans’ handling of the Jewish problem was of special
interest to the recruits. They were impressed by the fact that Berdychiv was no
longer ‘‘ percent Jewish,’’ adding that here ‘‘the Jew is universally rejected.
Even the prisoners avoid working with Jews and half-Jews.’’ 37
German civil and police leaders needed a loyal police corps to secure the remote areas that were coming under increasing partisan attack. They appealed
to the desire of the ‘‘natives’’ for a Western way of life, explained their presence as historically justified, and—given the apparent anti-Semitism among
Ukrainians and ethnic Germans—claimed that the Holocaust was mutually
beneficial.38
Thus thousands of Ukrainian policemen provided the commissariat officials
with the necessary manpower and local information about the population and
terrain. Hundreds in the mobile battalions (#, , ) and stationary SSpolice units participated directly in the killing of Jews. It must be stressed,
however, that the Germans initiated and controlled anti-Jewish policies as well
as steered Ukrainian involvement in the ‘‘Final Solution.’’ 39
 The Machinery of Destruction
The Commissar as Central Coordinator of Anti-Jewish
Policy Interagency Collaboration at the Local Level
Even with the extensive recruiting and training of local police, the regional
and district commissars had to enlist other Reich German personnel to carry
out the genocide. For example, in the district of Ruzhyn, which was ,
square kilometers with , inhabitants, the gendarme post was equipped
with two motorcycles and a motorized bicycle, but no truck. Therefore, individuals ostensibly in non-police functions were expected to provide assistance
and to serve in policing roles. It was not unusual for an SD officer to approach a
German employee of a private firm, such as a government-contracted engineer
attached to Organization Todt (OT), to request the use of his trucks for transporting Jews or of staff engineers to serve as guards in an upcoming action.
In July  Higher SS and Police Leader Prützmann decided to train the foresters in Zhytomyr ‘‘to carry out tasks similar to the police units.’’ Besides Jewish refugees, a growing number of partisans encamped in the forests were to
be apprehended, interrogated, and shot. Like U.S. Park officials, the foresters
had law enforcement functions, particularly regarding poaching, vandalism,
and the search for missing persons or suspects on their grounds.40
The vast involvement of Germans outside of the police hierarchy occurred
within the bureaucracy of the civil commissariat, and more directly among individuals who agreed on the spot to assist in the killing actions. Sometimes these
two types of involvement overlapped when commissars themselves pushed
through the paperwork behind the Holocaust as well as participated in the carnage. In the commissariat structure, the regional and district leaders consulted
with a small group of departmental chiefs, five in all. One of these chiefs was
the local SS and police leader who advised the commissar on the state of the
‘‘Jewish question’’ in the area. Each month Commissar Klemm (and his successor, Leyser) reported to Rosenberg’s ministry in Berlin about whether his
respective area was ‘‘free of Jews’’ and the number of Jews killed.
As the primary persons charged with the welfare of the local population, the
commissars were responsible for the rations, housing, and general plight of
the Jews.41 According to Koch’s ration instructions, Jews received food only if it
was available and the caloric allotment was not to exceed the amount assigned
to children up to age fourteen.42 Jews assigned to hard labor who officially
should have been allotted larger rations received no more than two ‘‘meals’’ per
day in the camps, one at about : .. and the other at about : .. A
typical meal consisted of a watery soup and ersatz bread. One Jewish laborer
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
who was among  assigned to road construction near Vinnytsia wrote that
they received a -gram mixture of chestnuts and sawdust.43 Under the supervision of the commissars’ so-called nutrition, medical, and labor experts, nonlaboring Jews in the camps were, as a policy, left to die of starvation and disease.
Besides the distribution of food, the commissars controlled the distribution
of Jewish property. A subsection of the Political Policies Department, which
was led by a Dr. Müssig, tallied the seized currency, gold, jewelry, and other
valuables.44 To some degree, it is possible to connect Müssig’s accounting reports to the timing of anti-Jewish massacres, since the district-level SS and
policemen were supposed to hand over the most valuable items to Müssig. At
the end of July , Müssig ordered that all district and city commissars generate lists of Jewish gold, silver, cash, and other valuables, and that the lists and
items be brought to the commissariat’s finance department. Müssig reissued
this order on  October  and added that other items such as clothing
should be included for the ‘‘urgent’’ needs of local organizations (for example,
the Ethnic German Liaison Office).45 In the district office at Berdychiv, Gebietskommissar Ernst Göllner levied a special tax against the Jews as part of Erich
Koch’s demand to raise taxes and seek ‘‘other methods for extracting money
from the locals.’’ The money collected was carefully counted and entered in the
commissar’s accounting books as income under the heading ‘‘Judenabgabe.’’
The name of each Jewish ‘‘taxpayer’’ was also listed.46 As of February , the
district commissar’s accountant in Chudniv stopped tallying a ‘‘Jewish contribution,’’ which suggests that the population had been either destroyed or relocated to a camp in Berdychiv.
Given the lack of financial assets held by Jews in Soviet territories, the Nazis
concentrated their plundering operation on the confiscation of apartments,
furniture, bedding, clothing, and other household items. On  December 
General Commissar Klemm ordered that all Jewish property be handed over
to the commissariat office for disposition. This demand served multiple purposes: it ensured that the Germans skimmed off the best booty; it provided the
German commissars with bribery material for manipulating and paying off indigenous collaborators; and it gave the Germans the upper hand in managing
the numerous conflicts among Ukrainians who illegally grabbed abandoned
Jewish property or made claims to it. When local Ukrainian militiamen plundered Jewish belongings, they violated Nazi decrees as well as stirred up local
disputes over the spoils of the genocide.47
The commissariat’s housing office and inventory commission registered
and redistributed Jewish property to local officials, military commanders, and
 The Machinery of Destruction
ethnic Germans.48 Assisted by Ukrainian and ethnic German clerks, the commissar compiled lists of Jews who had been ‘‘resettled’’ and the contents of
their dwellings. Letters from local OT representatives, ethnic Germans, army
officials, and other Reich Germans in the area streamed into the inventory commission’s office with requests for beds, tables, chairs, and cupboards. In July
 Klemm’s deputy in the inventory commission, someone named Plisko,
issued detailed instructions about the confiscation of Jewish property, putting
a temporary halt to the distribution of Jewish valuables at the booty depot since
many local officials were taking items without the proper paperwork. He advised the district commissars not to dispose of the original lists of property
registered by the Jews, who were now mostly dead, because these lists were the
most complete records available.49 Plisko wanted to keep these lists in order
to maintain financial order and to prevent personal skimming.
The commissars’ persecution bureaucracy extended into the realm of public health. In Zhytomyr the chief of public health, Dr. Kuhlberg, reported on
the outbreak of epidemics that he attributed to the arrival of Hungarian Jewish construction detachments in the northern districts. No effort was made to
provide medical aid to the ill Jewish laborers. On the contrary, typhoid-stricken
laborers were quarantined in a barn and burned alive as a ‘‘preventive health
measure.’’ 50 In another public ‘‘hygiene’’ order of June , the commander
of the gendarmerie in Zhytomyr ordered all German police who come in contact with the Jews to bathe and check themselves for lice.51 The timing of this
order coincided with the Nazi liquidations of labor camps and ghettos in the
summer of .
While the commissariat officials (many of them with professional and doctoral degrees in law, engineering, and medicine) routinely pursued the implementation of anti-Jewish measures in bureaucratic ways—by calculating
lists of Jewish property, distributing starvation-level rations to the camps, and
monitoring epidemics near Jewish camps—other German personnel in the civil
administration actually participated in the shooting actions.52 According to
Rosenberg’s ‘‘Brown File,’’ the district commissar had unlimited power to enforce police actions against Jews.53 Typically, the Gebietskommissar himself,
after supervising a roundup of Jews, also arrived with the SD commando at the
pits and observed the shootings. In the district of Lityn, Gebietskommissar
(SA Standartenführer) Traugott Vollkammer oversaw the action and observed
the mass shootings during the ‘‘ghetto’’ clearing on  December . One
of the commissar’s deputies in the political policy department actually carried
out the shooting of one or more Jews in October .54
In Samhorodok, Gebietskommissar Wolfgang Steudel introduced the JewThe Machinery of Destruction

ish population to the ‘‘Final Solution.’’ German gendarmerie and Ukrainian
police first began to concentrate the Jews there as late as  May ; during this ‘‘ghetto’’ action German and Ukrainian police shot the sick and the
elderly and those who tried to flee. A few weeks later, on  June , the remaining population of about  Jewish men, women, and children were killed
after Steudel ordered the Ukrainian mayor of Germanivka to assign twenty-five
Ukrainians from the nearby collective farm to dig mass graves. Steudel personally inspected the pits shortly before the Jews arrived. He managed the entire
action, directing the local gendarme station leader, Josef Richter, and drafting
the Ukrainian helpers. Two or more SD men who arrived from the SD outpost
in Vinnytsia did the shooting at the pits, however.55
Himmler’s agencies maintained the leading role over the mass murder apparatus, but the sheer scope and great importance that Nazi leaders assigned to
the ‘‘Final Solution’’ meant that the SS-police needed the assistance of virtually all local German agencies. The commissariat’s participation, in contrast
to other non-police agencies in the region, was imperative.56 Besides the commissars, local Wehrmacht village and field commanders in the region, as well
as Hungarian and Slovakian security divisions, contributed to the Holocaust.57
The military provided battalions of defense units (Landesschützenverbände),
to serve as guards at the POW camps. Throughout , the second company
of LS Battalion  carried out mass shootings in the sand pits located between
the cemetery and horse stables of Stalag  (in partnership with Sipo-SD
Commander Razesberger’s men from Zhytomyr).58 In the southern part of the
region around Vinnytsia, Hungarian officers joined the small planning staffs
of commissars and SS-policemen who determined when and how a massacre
would occur. For example, on  May  in Haisyn (about eighty kilometers
southeast of Vinnytsia), a meeting was held in the office of the local Wehrmacht
Ortskommandantur. The purpose of the meeting was to plan for the execution
of the local Jewish population scheduled for the next day. Gebietskommissar
Becher, who had probably received some prior direction from the SD in Vinnytsia, called the meeting and invited two local military commanders, Wehrmacht
Major Heinrich and the commander of the Hungarian battalion, along with the
station chief of the gendarme post, Dreckmeier.59 Because they intended to
round up the Jews from three villages, Commissar Becher split the action into
two transports; one of these was led by Major Heinrich and supported by Ukrainian Schutzmänner and Hungarian infantry. In the early morning of : ..
they forced the Jews onto trucks and drove them to the execution site at Teplyk where a shooting commando of SD men stood ready. About  Jews were
killed in these massacres.60
 The Machinery of Destruction
In addition to the collaboration of military units stationed in the region,
one of the more unusual developments in Zhytomyr was the involvement of
the Organization Todt, a semi-military organization tasked with the construction of military installations and highways. This organization’s involvement
in the ‘‘Final Solution’’ in Zhytomyr was most evident in the building of Hitler’s headquarters and the DG IV project. Typically, OT officials who were employed by private building firms, like Firma Dohrmann, also held staff positions within the commissariat structure and reported up through the military
hierarchy. But when the SS began to eclipse the role of the civil administration
in the DG IV project as early as , the OT began to work more closely with
SS building inspection offices, headquartered in Vinnytsia with outposts near
the road construction and camps (such as in Haisyn). The SS formed units of
security police who oversaw the forced-labor activities along the highway; they
also guarded the projects against partisan attackers. These German SS-police
inspectors and their auxiliary guards (mostly Lithuanians) relied on the OT station leaders to identify the Jewish workers who were on the brink of death and
therefore deemed no longer useful as laborers.
‘‘Vernichtung durch Arbeit’’ Jewish Laborers
on DG IV and Nazi Headquarters
The Nazi policy of using Jewish laborers, in projects such as road construction, was officially endorsed by Heydrich at the Wannsee Conference in January .61 But what Heydrich revealed at Wannsee had been put into practice months earlier in Zhytomyr (and before that in eastern Galicia). In August
 while stationed at Zhytomyr, Otto Rasch, chief of Einsatzgruppe C, reported that ‘‘until the Final Solution of the Jewish problem is achieved across
the continent, Jews can be used up in the cultivating of swampy areas around
the Pripiat’, the Dnepr, and the Volga.’’ 62 A month later he reiterated that unlike the procedure in the General Government, the Jews in Ukraine should be
killed through the kind of hard labor that was so desperately needed. Since
they constituted an entire class of skilled labor, Rasch reasoned, they could be
used for special projects and killed when their skills were no longer needed.
In order to complete reconstruction work for military operations, he wrote, ‘‘it
has become necessary to exclude, provisionally, from execution the older Jewish skilled workers.’’ 63
Already in August , OT officials arrived in the area and targeted the Jews
for labor assignments. Since many of these Jews were either beaten or killed on
the job, Jews stopped responding to the OT demand for labor.64 The OT found
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
a less resistant labor force in the POW camps, where captured Red Army soldiers were desperate to flee the abominable conditions of the camps and secure
food rations. In early to mid-September , military and OT chiefs in the region began to plan for seven labor camps for road construction to be placed between Vinnytsia and Haisyn.65 An OT headquarters was established in the city
of Zhytomyr for DG V, the proposed highway running north-south from Zhytomyr toward Vinnytsia. The autobahn labor camps were planned for every fifteen
kilometers of road. The DG IV route (running in an east-west direction through
Vinnytsia) was not a new roadway. In the late eighteenth century, Catherine the
Great began to build the road, but in  it fell far below German autobahn
standards. The German plan was to reconstruct the existing road by widening
it by eight meters, asphalting it, and digging drainage trenches along the sides.
With the availability of the needed resources (quarries and laborers) and the
proximity of Hitler’s headquarters, this particular stretch of DG IV, a highway
that was to extend eventually from L’viv to Uman’, became a feasible priority.
In the early days of the DG IV project, local German military commanders transferred groups of  POWs each from the Stalag Zhmerynka and the
Zhytomyr Dulags / to Vinnytsia; there they were formed into construction detachments and assigned to one of the DG IV camps.66 Units of the Security Divisions  and  guarded the workers and the POW camps along the
roadway.67 Organization Todt supplied technical staffs that manned special OT
stations along the road. A number of OT engineers arrived in Vinnytsia in April
, just after members of the SS Bauabschnittsleitung (Construction Sector
Directorate) had received their assignments at the stations.
In January and February  Himmler formalized the SS’s role in the autobahn projects of the East. He assigned Higher SS and Police Leader Prützmann
and his regional SS-police forces to secure the forced laborers. Prützmann set
up a special commission for his assignment, which was called the ‘‘Einsatzstab Gieseke,’’ named after the commission’s director, Senior Lieutenant of the
Gendarmerie Walter Gieseke. Under Gieseke stood four SS Oberbauabschnittsleitungen (Senior Construction Sector Directorates), staffed by SS leaders with
the title of inspector. One of these SS offices was located in Vinnytsia and led
by SS-Brigadeführer Ludolf von Alvensleben, inspector for road construction.
Though initially there existed some conflict among leaders over Himmler’s acquisition of the DG IV project, in the field the OT and SS men fell into their
respective roles. Essentially the SS took charge of supplying the forced laborers
and managing the camps, whereas the OT controlled the engineering and road
construction.68
The OT stations were situated alongside the SS outposts, such as at Voro The Machinery of Destruction
novytsia (district Nemyriv) and at the Hnivan’ quarry in Teplyk (district Vinnytsia). The OT senior engineers and technicians devised their construction plans
and then contracted private firms, mainly from Germany and the Netherlands,
to complete the work. Though private firms such as Firma Barkhausen in Lityn
paid the SS for the individual laborers and their rations, the SS did not in turn
pay wages to the POWs and Jews and forced them to work under the worst conditions. According to the diary of survivor Arnold Daghani, there were eight
road contractors hired by OT to engineer the Haisyn-Uman’ stretch of road
near Vinnytsia. Approximately , Ukrainian Jews and , Romanian Jews
labored on this project between  and .69
By the end of March , the SS Construction Directorates were staffed
by two German policemen and guard battalions of Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Latvian, and Cossack Schutzmannschaften. Generally the German civil engineers
came up with the work assignments, while the Lithuanian and Ukrainian
guards beat the laborers, often in an excessively brutal manner. German Security Police and Order Police served as camp commandants and supervised auxiliary guards over several stretches of road.70
Relations among OT men, German police, and the Schutzmannschaften
in the DG IV project were generally smooth; however, not all of the OT civil
engineers looked favorably upon SS-police methods.71 For example, when an
SD officer from Haisyn approached OT machinist Josef Rader (from Firma
Massenberg-Essen) and asked him to participate in a mass shooting, Rader
declined. Another OT Stutzpunktleiter (base leader) from Firma Dohrmann
helped  Jews by allowing them to flee in . In another instance, an OT
official from this same firm complained that the shootings near the building
sites impaired the productivity of other workers; in response, the SS agreed to
carry out the shootings away from the construction areas.72
These examples illustrate that some OT representatives were critical of the
mistreatment of Jewish laborers, and in rare cases tried to rescue the laborers
from their certain death. Most, however, were unable to distance themselves
from the SS and police methods, and some even participated in the executions.
OT engineers and construction supervisors routinely handed over the Jews who
could not work to local SS and policemen. OT engineers and construction
leaders did not have the ‘‘power of a public office’’ to carry forth an execution,
but occasionally they transgressed this Nazi law. For example, a military court
at Proskuriv (Luts’k) sentenced Johann Meisslein to three months in prison for
ordering Lithuanian guards to kill two Jewish women. His crime was not the
murder of two Jews (or assistance of it); he was convicted of acting outside his
official jurisdiction.
The Machinery of Destruction

Meisslein was an OT foreman. In  he supervised Jewish laborers who
worked on DG IV between Luts’k and Vinnytsia. Each day as the columns of
Jewish laborers left the Ositna camp to work on his stretch of the road, Meisslein observed that two ill Jewish women were being dragged along. He complained that when the women reached the building site with the others, they
were of no use, lying along the side of the road in a trench. He recommended
that they be ‘‘removed at the next opportunity.’’ It was clear to all what ‘‘removal’’ meant in this context. In fact, a similar situation had previously arisen,
and the OT asked that the ill Jews at the construction site be sent to the SS
camp Ositna. At Ositna, the German police ordered two Lithuanian guards to
shoot and bury the Jews. So when Meisslein then ordered his Polish assistant
‘‘to do what he could to remove’’ the Jewish women from the work site, his
assistant brought them to the Lithuanian guards, who then shot and buried
them in the nearby woods. Not expecting to be reprimanded for the incident,
Meisslein dutifully reported the executions to the local SS office. But shortly
thereafter the SS captain Franz Christoffel reproached him for getting mixed
up in ‘‘police matters’’; Meisslein was brought before a tribunal of military,
OT, and SS-police officials and sentenced to three months in prison. His case
shows that when German officials from different agencies became involved in
the execution of Jews, SS and police officials tried to maintain their ultimate
authority over the ‘‘Final Solution,’’ arguing that only they were empowered to
order the execution of Jews. The outcome of the trial demonstrates that overstepping one’s authority in the Nazi system was a criminal act, not the murder
of Jews per se.73
There are extremely few accounts and records about DG IV camp conditions
and the experiences of Jews who labored on the road, though a few historians have begun to explore this emerging topic.74 One Jewish survivor, Vladimir Goykher, published his memoirs about a construction site near Vinnytsia.
He wrote that ‘‘I and twelve other boys ages – years dug sand for twelve
hours per day. . . . We were beaten regularly’’ by a German ‘‘soldier,’’ who often
beat the boys ‘‘out of boredom.’’ 75 In another related source, an OT man revealed that the Schutzmannschaft guards had shot all eighteen members of
a Jewish labor unit because the weather was cold and the guards wanted to
leave their post to find warm shelter.76 At Mykhailivka, twelve kilometers west
of Haisyn, about  Jews from Ukraine and Romania were crammed into a
stable along with the horses. In such abominable conditions, survivor Arnold
Daghani wrote in his wartime diary, disease was rampant, and those who could
not get up to work were eventually separated and shot. Besides children, there
 The Machinery of Destruction
Image rights unavailable
Arnold Daghani (–), Work on the Main Road, . Watercolor on paper
(Collection of the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem)
Arnold Daghani, a Romanian Jewish artist, was deported in August  to the forced labor
camp of Mikhailivka near Haisyn, a town in the Vinnytsia region of German-occupied Ukraine.
German officials and Lithuanian guards who ran the camp demanded that Daghani paint their
portraits. They supplied him with paper, which Daghani used to secretly document the lives and
experiences of the Jewish laborers. He and his wife, Anishora, escaped from the camp in the summer
of , a few months before it was liquidated.
were a number of women among the laborers.77 Starvation was perhaps the
workers’ greatest form of suffering.78
A rare and revealing source, Daghani’s diary presents the odd mix and
interaction of perpetrators at the road construction sites in Ukraine: German
engineers and their families, lowly power-seeking SS men, Lithuanian noncommissioned officers, and high-ranking SS officers. Despite their diverse
backgrounds, they devised a brutal system for selecting and killing the ‘‘unfit’’ laborers (mostly women, children, and the infirm); they seemed to relish
their power over the laborers, beating them as they worked on the road and
in the gravel pits. Their inhumane approach thrived on routine as well as random acts of humiliation, and on murder, which had the desired effect of terrorizing the workers and curbing resistance. Daghani related that at Haisyn,
for example, the Lithuanian guards convinced German inspectors to kill two
elderly women working on the road. The women (who were friends) appeared
to be healthy, but one of them possessed a pair of sturdy snow boots, which the
guards wanted. They were simply ordered to march a few hundred yards from
the site and were then shot by one of the guards. OT foremen tormented the
The Machinery of Destruction

Image rights unavailable
Arnold Daghani (–), Back ‘‘Home’’ from Work, . Pencil on paper.
(Collection of the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem)
Image rights unavailable
Arnold Daghani (–), Mass Graves, . Watercolor on paper.
(Collection of the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem)
laborers with cutting remarks, such as one made by a young OT driver, Ernst
Joseph Hennes, who blurted out to Daghani and his fellow laborers: ‘‘You’re
like cattle purchased by the butcher. One of you will be slain today, the others
tomorrow. The turn will come to all of you.’’ After hearing this, Daghani reflected in his diary, ‘‘That remark passed off for sympathy. Was it?’’ 79
Besides the continuous and routine ‘‘cleansing’’ of the camps by German
police leaders and their Schutzmannschaften, SS Bauabschnittsleitung leaders
joined forces with the nearest Sipo-SD office to ‘‘hunt down’’ Jews outside the
camps. Together they carried out mass executions of Jews from nearby villages
or from Romanian and Hungarian labor detachments.80 The German military
and SS-police purchased the Romanian Jewish laborers, had them transported
across the Bug River (the German-Romanian border), and put them to work in
the quarries and camps of the Vinnytsia region. The German ‘‘selection’’ process occurred after the Romanian Jews arrived in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.81
One member of the local SS inspectorate office near Vinnytsia distinguished
himself as a killer: Karl Klenk. He was Hauptwachtmeister of the Schutzpolizei
The Machinery of Destruction

and camp commandant at Krasnopolka and Tyvriv. Not only did he torture and
kill Jews in the camps, but he also went after the remnant Jewish populations
in the nearby towns. In the summer of , Klenk assisted the local gendarmerie in the massacre of Hnivan’’s Jews. First he forced twenty POW laborers
from one of his DG IV camps to level an area into an airfield where the SD killing squad could land its small plane. Then Klenk and his Lithuanian auxiliaries
returned to Hnivan’, pulled the Jews from their houses, and brought them to
a nearby forest. There they met the execution squad of SD men who had been
escorted from the airfield by the local Gebietskommissar.82
The added presence of SS-policemen assigned to the DG IV project meant
that Zhytomyr’s Jewish population faced yet another concentrated effort to
‘‘clear’’ the areas along the highways. For most Jews who were assigned to the
project, their suffering was merely prolonged and their fate remained the same
as their Jewish relatives who had perished earlier in  and . Upon the
liquidation of the DG IV camps in late –early , the German SD, Order
Police, and non-German auxiliaries had killed, according to one scholar’s estimate, as many as , Jewish laborers in Ukraine.83 At the DG IV labor camps
in Haisyn, about , Jews were worked to death and killed when the camps
were liquidated. Thousands were killed in June  and October  at the
former Khmil’nyk ghetto. A recent quantitative analysis of the Holocaust in
Vinnytsia estimates that , Jews died in the labor camps during –.84
Jewish Laborers and Nazi Elite Headquarters
Among the few thousand Jews who were temporarily spared as laborers,
more than , were assigned to a unique project in the Zhytomyr region: the
construction of Hitler’s and Himmler’s headquarters in early . The story
of this project reveals more than one facet of the ‘‘Final Solution.’’ First of
all, the OT officials initiated the use of Jewish labor at Hitler’s headquarters,
which effectively linked this organization to the Holocaust.85 Second, the timing of the building and eventual arrival of Hitler and other elites to the region
coincided with the major killing actions around Zhytomyr and Vinnytsia. The
larger part of Zhytomyr’s Jews were killed between September  and July
 as local SS and police were pressured to ‘‘clear’’ the area before the arrival of Hitler, Himmler, and other Nazi chiefs. And, third, the use of Jews as
laborers fulfilled a short-term German need and also provided SD personnel
with an ‘‘acceptable’’ pretext for killing the Jewish laborers who had worked
at the sites. They argued that all of the Jewish laborers and their families must
die as an extra ‘‘security precaution.’’

The Machinery of Destruction
In planning the construction of the headquarters, Nazi leaders confronted
a problem that became especially acute in the late autumn of . The Germans had destroyed their greatest source of skilled labor in the summer and
autumn of . But by January  the priorities of Himmler and Todt converged into another temporary solution to this problem; the remaining Jews
from Ukraine, Romania, and Hungary would provide the much-needed skilled
labor, and they would be either worked to death or executed upon the completion of the project.86 At first, local SD authorities were against bringing
Jews to the headquarters sites, and they tried to appeal to Reich Commissar
Koch, but the army and the autobahn construction chief, Fritz Todt, could
not find an adequate number of masons, carpenters, and joiners among the
Ukrainian population.87 In a memorandum to Rosenberg on the handling of
the Jewish question, dated  January , Himmler had specified that ‘‘measures to eliminate Jews should be taken without regard for economic consequences,’’ but (as is evident in the Wannsee Protocol) he also accepted the
policy of using Jewish laborers for street building and, more discreetly, in the
construction of his own headquarters, and then killing them after the work
was complete.88
In Vinnytsia especially, where additional Reich security forces were assigned
to ‘‘Eichenhain’’ (the code name for the construction of Hitler’s Werwolf
bunker), massacres against Jews coincided with the preparations for Hitler’s
arrival in the area. The construction of the bunker lasted from  December
 to  July .89 Before the builders broke ground on Eichenhain, SS Standartenführer Hans Rattenhuber, who was chief of the Führer’s Special Security Forces (Reich Sicherheitsdienst, RSD), contacted the local SS and SD officials to coordinate their security operations around the proposed site.90 The
task of the RSD office near Vinnytsia, staffed by SS men of the GFP Security
Group East, was intelligence gathering and control of suspicious persons who
‘‘for reasons of their Bolshevik views . . . and their Jewish racial membership’’
were an espionage and sabotage danger.91 Since early November  the Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP ) had been combing the villages near the planned
site and began to eradicate all ‘‘security’’ threats, including Jews. Besides the
ongoing execution of Jewish POWs who arrived in the region’s camps, about
, Jews were killed during October, November, December, and early January in neighboring districts at Khmil’nyk, Lityn, and Brailov. In addition, nearly
, Ukrainian households (about , Ukrainians) within five kilometers
of the site were later ‘‘removed.’’ 92 On  January the RSD killed  Jews
at Strizhavka, the actual grounds of the Werwolf site. SS Sturmbannführer
Schmidt described the massacre at Strizhavka:
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In the village of Strishawka there were  Jewish residents. The large number of Jews is explained by the fact that a GPU camp was in that village. Since
the Jews were a big danger for the site [Führer headquarters], I made a request to the Gebietskommissar to have the Jews evacuated. Because of special circumstances, an evacuation was not possible. Therefore the Jews were
done in on  January  between the hours of : .. and : ..
In order to carry out the operation, our office had to provide a pit, and
after the ‘‘transfer’’ had to level [the mass grave] in an orderly fashion. With
the assistance of OT-men and POWs, the pit was dug out with explosives
because of the hard frost. Four officials of the Security Police, twenty officials of the Feldgendarmerie and Schutzpolizei, and all of the officials from
the office took part in the operation. The employment of officials was necessary in order to bring the Jews out of their dwellings to the distant pit and
to secure the execution site against unauthorized persons.93
By mid-January the designated area for Hitler’s Werwolf bunker was ‘‘free of
Jews,’’ and later in March an SS-police unit began to ‘‘clear’’ the areas around
the airport and the route leading to the bunker. Local SS-police and RSD officials in Vinnytsia were informed by their SS-police colleagues outside the region about any possible security threats that might infiltrate the area. Lists
of Jewish escapees from neighboring regions and from Nazi-occupied Poland
were circulated. For example, several dozen Jewish nurses broke out of a POW
camp in Luts’k and attempted to rejoin their families in the Vinnytsia region.
The Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber for Ukraine instructed the local gendarmerie to
hunt down these young women (who were eighteen to twenty years old).94 The
next major task in preparing for Hitler’s arrival was the final liquidation of the
Jews of the city of Vinnytsia, the largest town just nine kilometers south of the
bunker. For this massacre, they needed to draw on several local offices to assist with the planning and implementation.
On  January  the SS and police leader for Vinnytsia, Major Kurt
Pomme, hosted a meeting with the district commissar for Vinnytsia, Gemeinschaftsführer Fritz Halle; the SD-Sipo chief for Vinnytsia, Theodor Salmanzig; and Rattenhuber’s deputy, SS-Sturmbannführer Friedrich Schmidt. They
convened to discuss the remaining number and location of Vinnytsia’s Jews,
the timing of the next killing action, and the number of Jews to be spared as
laborers. Johann Bahmann, the chief of the Schutzpolizei in Vinnytsia who had
just taken up his position, also attended and was quickly initiated into the local
perpetrator network involved in the Holocaust. He and the other SS-policemen
 The Machinery of Destruction
who were new to the region learned about the massacres of Jews that had taken
place since July  when Sonderkommando b had eliminated the Jewish
leadership in the first days of the military occupation of the city. Their preferred
killing site, where they established a prison for the Jews, was near the brick
works. They also placed the Jews under guard in a sewing factory and jail.95 On
 September German SS-police and regional military authorities carried out
one of the bloodiest actions in the region; between , and , women,
children, and elderly people were forced to strip naked and stand before pits
where they were shot by EK and Order Police Battalion .96
In January  nearly , Jews remained in the city prison and the brick
works, which became an OT-run factory dedicated to the Eichenhain construction.97 Some worked in the city’s essential industries such as electrical and
water works. But the SD decided that only  of them were absolutely necessary for the local industry while the rest could be simply eliminated in one
day.98 On  April City Commissar Fritz Margenfeld ordered all Jews to gather
in the sports stadium; they were told that a ghetto would be formed. After ,
were selected as skilled laborers for the Werwolf site, the rest were transported
by truck to the forest and shot.99
About this time there emerged a new ‘‘security threat’’ that local SS and SD
officials reported to the RSD commander, Hans Rattenhuber. Some , Jewish refugees in Romanian-occupied Ukraine (Transnistria) were residing just
thirty-five kilometers south of the Werwolf site; they were intolerably close to
this top-secret site, so the SS-police argued that they too ‘‘had to be killed.’’
The Romanians, a German SD official complained, were not suitably efficient in
carrying out the ‘‘Final Solution.’’ In order to stem the flow of starved, typhoidstricken Jewish refugees who were crossing into German territory in search of
food, SS leaders in Vinnytsia imposed stricter border controls and pressured
the Romanians to follow the current German approach to the ‘‘Jewish problem’’: mass shooting.100
About one week before Hitler arrived at his Werwolf headquarters, now barricaded by pine forest, rows of guards, patrols of secret policemen with dogs,
aerial surveillance, anti-aircraft guns and barbed wire fencing, Sipo-SD Commander Razesberger in Zhytomyr contacted his SD chief in the Vinnytsia outpost, Salmanzig. He wrote that his boss, the commander of Ukraine’s Security
Police in Kiev, Max Thomas, had ordered a final, mandatory cleansing action
against all the Jews of Vinnytsia. Razesberger added that he knew specifically
of sixteen Jews who worked at the Waldhof (a military clubhouse on the Werwolf compound) who should be replaced with Ukrainians ‘‘for security rea-
The Machinery of Destruction

German SS-policeman shooting a Jewish man in Vinnytsia, surrounded by members of the SS-police
force and the Wehrmacht (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ullstein Bild,
#)
Hitler with General Field Marshal Wilhelm List and Hermann Göring at Werwolf Headquarters,
Vinnytsia,  August  (Ullstein Bild #)
sons.’’ 101 After this final massacre, the SS men attached to the RSD were decorated with the Kriegsverdienstkreuz (a distinguished military service medal),
for serving as ‘‘partisan hunters’’ in the areas around the Hitler bunker.102
The Soviet POWs who worked on the site were also deemed a security threat
and killed. As many as , Soviet POWs constructed the compound, and
, died during the building phase, which occurred mainly in the winter
months when the ground was frozen and the Germans insisted on excavating
the deep bunker and bomb shelters according to the Führer’s wishes. The remaining , POWs ‘‘disappeared’’ in the summer of  and were not heard
from thereafter.103
But for some regional officials the immediate need for labor was a strong
enough rationale for slowing the machinery of the Holocaust. The story of
the use of Jewish labor and the construction of Himmler’s headquarters offers
an unusual example of how one local SD leader was pressured into complying with the ‘‘Final Solution.’’ About  Jews were also employed in the construction of Himmler’s Hegewald headquarters, which contained an airfield,
several houses, barracks, elegant living quarters, and a bunker with thick concrete walls.104 After the war, Zhytomyr’s Sipo-SD chief Razesberger provided
The Machinery of Destruction
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Hitler’s office at Werwolf. The photo was taken during Hitler’s last stay at the headquarters
between  February and  March . (Ullstein Bild #)
the only detailed description of the compound, referring to an expensive rug
on the wall of Himmler’s office.105
About the time that Himmler arrived at his Hegewald headquarters (on
 July ), the SS and police leader of Zhytomyr, Otto Hellwig, ordered the
SD leader in Berdychiv, Hauptsturmführer Alois Hülsdünker, to execute the remaining  of Berdychiv’s Jews, including eighty women and ten children who
had been discovered after the last massacre.106 Hülsdünker, who had secretly
allowed thirty Jews to work in his SD outpost, testified after the war that he
felt uneasy about this order. According to his testimony, he had been sent to
Berdychiv from the Reich because his superiors suspected his insufficient ideological commitment to Nazism.107 Service in the East was supposed to toughen
him up.
To ensure that the order to liquidate the Berdychiv Jewish camp at Krasnaia Gora would be carried out, Razesberger drove to Berdychiv and presented
the order to Hülsdünker in person. Hülsdünker wavered. He asked about the
needed laborers and protested that the women and children did not pose a
threat, but Razesberger insisted that all the Jews in the area who worked at the
Himmler compound or who remained near the site threatened German secu The Machinery of Destruction
Himmler receiving birthday congratulations from SS-police colleagues in his Hegewald office,
 October  (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of James Blevins, #)
rity. Hülsdünker complied and began to organize the killing of the  Jews
in the camp. On  June  German SS-police leaders in Berdychiv and their
Ukrainian aides brought the Jews to some horse stables and then led them in
groups to a pit several hundred meters from there. Several Jews tried to flee
but were shot. They were forced to lie face down at the bottom of the pit and
were killed by a pistol shot to the head. Ukrainian militia threw sand over them.
Hülsdünker telephoned Razesberger to report that the order to liquidate the
camp had been carried out. Unbeknownst to Razesberger, the thirty Jews who
worked in the SD office were spared. In his postwar testimony, Hülsdünker
claimed that some were able to flee when the Sipo-SD closed its office in the autumn of .108 Vasilii Grossman, who collected testimony in – about
the Holocaust in Berdychiv, learned that the Germans shot these last Jewish
laborers as the Red Army advanced on Zhytomyr. One man, a harness maker
named Khaim Borisovich, miraculously survived.109
The fact that Hülsdünker and the SD in Berdychiv continued to conceal the
Jews in their office demonstrates that at the local level there existed the possibility to disobey official policy and prolong, perhaps even save, Jewish lives. Be
it for pragmatic or moral reasons, some of the local German leaders secretly
employed Jews. Regional German officials were warned repeatedly to hand
these Jews over to the nearest SD office. In addition a small number of Jews conThe Machinery of Destruction

tinued to work as skilled laborers in various industries. In late October ,
an economic analyst in Vinnytsia’s Stadtkommissariat confirmed that no more
Jewish workshops existed since the ‘‘Jewish question’’ had been ‘‘clarified’’ but
added that a few individual Jews still worked in various local industries; actually as many as  were employed at a local clothing factory.110 The Nazi exploitation of Jewish labor meant that a relatively small number of Jews had the
chance to survive the Holocaust, and many Jews clung to the hope that they
might be among those few spared. However, the Nazi use of Jewish labor was
not representative of a general pattern ‘‘in the field’’ in which lower-level German leaders in the SS and police, or from other agencies, tried to rescue Jews or
resist the ‘‘Final Solution.’’ Pressure from superiors and their ardent followers,
who gained control over the everyday operations of the Nazi system, was so
great that by the end of  nearly all of these remaining Jewish laborers and
their families had been killed.
The Nazi implementation of the ‘‘Final Solution’’ was an ongoing invention of central and peripheral leaders. Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich defined the aim of the policy, and they constructed an administrative
framework in order to achieve it. Yet in its realization, the process of persecution and methods of mass murder developed from the ground up, often after
‘‘on the spot’’ decision-making about how to proceed with a massacre in the
most expedient manner. In other words, the technicians and operators of the
‘‘Final Solution’’ apparatus—men like Higher SS and Police Leader Jeckeln,
SKa commander Blobel, Sixth Army judge Neumann, and Oberstabsarzt Panning developed a callously efficient, ‘‘zweckmässig’’ approach to mass shooting. As of August , they sought to kill as many Jews as possible. Many
written reports specified that male Jews had been executed first because the
Germans believed that the men posed the greatest threat of resistance, but
Nazi racial anti-Semitism was inherently aimed at the entire Jewish population.
There were limitations and contingencies that surrounded the implementation
of the policy, such as its psychological effects on the German executioners,
and logistical issues in the field. Yet, at a staggering pace, German leaders and
their subordinates effectively overcame such barriers and developed a division
of labor for carrying out the genocide.
Besides the magnitude of Nazi killing sprees in the region and the approach
of German commanders posted there in July–October , the absence of
ghettos in Zhytomyr also indicates that Nazi leaders intended to destroy the
population as quickly as possible. Generally they found the ghettos ‘‘not useful,’’ except as a temporary measure for concentrating larger Jewish popula The Machinery of Destruction
tions while the details for planning their mass execution could be worked out.
Ghettos in the Zhytomyr region were briefly considered by Nazi elites in early
January  as a remote place for ‘‘dumping’’ German Jews from the Reich,
not as transit sites for deporting Ukrainian Jews elsewhere. The only basis for
temporarily prolonging the lives of Jews, as Rasch and others recommended,
was to work them to death.
The timing of killing actions in the Zhytomyr region was directly linked to
the arrival and presence of the top leaders, who had numerous security forces
at their disposal. Mass shootings occurred in unprecedented numbers against
women and children when Higher SS and Police Leader Jeckeln was in the area
during August and September . Postwar testimonies concur that a general
escalation in killing was prompted by the visits of either Jeckeln or Heydrich
to Zhytomyr during the first half of August . A similar more explicit pattern occurred in  before and during Hitler’s and Himmler’s stay in the region. Local leaders in the commissariat administration and the SS-police tacitly
understood or received explicit instructions that the Jews had to be ‘‘removed’’
around the headquarters.
During the second phase of the ‘‘Final Solution’’ in Zhytomyr (and elsewhere
in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine), the commissars imposed their own individual styles of terror on the Jews—hence the mosaic of local Holocaust histories across the regions. Commissars like Göllner (in Berdychiv) and Steudel (in Koziatyn) were middle-ranking bureaucrats and former SA men who
suddenly found themselves in positions of extreme power. Like the SS-police
killing commanders who preceded them during the  sweep, the commissars understood that their local anti-Jewish actions were part of a much larger
aim of the ‘‘Final Solution.’’ Ultimately the test of a regional leader’s success
was his ability to seize on all of the local possibilities, especially the use of indigenous auxiliaries, for bringing about the exploitation and destruction of the
Jews. When the commissars declared their districts ‘‘free of Jews,’’ they sought
approbation from superiors for a job ‘‘well done.’’
The most remarkable administrative pattern was one of ad hoc collaboration. Ironically, factors that might have otherwise caused conflicts or resistance to the Holocaust, such as personnel shortages and the isolation of the
rural outposts, actually furthered it. Nevertheless, there were certain aspects
of the genocide, like the loss of skilled Jewish labor and the distribution of
Jewish valuables, that sparked in-fighting among local German officials. The
commissars and Nazi elites who had ambitious plans for building up the region’s transportation systems, housing, and industry wished to capitalize as
much as possible on ‘‘free’’ Jewish labor.
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
Hundreds of skilled Jewish laborers and thousands of POWs built the Nazi
leaders’ secret bunkers, and then were killed as a ‘‘security precaution’’ in the
first half of . When General Commissar Klemm claimed that his territory was ‘‘judenfrei’’ in June , this was not actually the case. Members of
the commissariat apparatus along with Himmler and Hitler’s special security
forces conducted some of the most aggressive manhunts against Jews. Yet they
also continued to bring in Jews from Transnistria, Hungary, and other parts
of Ukraine to build a new thruway system. Ultimately, however, the ideological consensus surrounding the ‘‘Final Solution’’ proved stronger than the economic rationale for keeping Jewish laborers alive. Thus, from the Nazi standpoint, a male Jewish laborer might be economically useful, but he was always
expendable.
In Zhytomyr the question of ‘‘how’’ the region’s Jewish population was destroyed so quickly and brutally can be explained as a combination of factors:
() a close collaboration of some of the more fanatical SS and army leaders (Blobel, Jeckeln, and Reichenau); () sufficient manpower found in the increasing
number of Order Police and indigenous auxiliaries; () high concentrations of
Jews who had little time and means to escape, and who found that their nonJewish neighbors were by and large indifferent to their plight; () the presence
of Nazi leaders in the region who either directly or indirectly pressured local
leaders to make their regions judenfrei; and () the involvement of non-police
agencies in anti-Jewish measures and massacres, namely, the General Commissariat and Organization Todt. Because these factors were present in other
parts of the Reich Commissariat Ukraine, the Holocaust in Zhytomyr was to a
large extent typical of what occurred elsewhere in occupied Ukraine.
The level of consensus and collaboration surrounding the ‘‘Final Solution’’
exceeded that of other top policies of the Nazi regime, such as forced-labor programs, agricultural requisitions, and campaigns to resettle ethnic Germans.
In contrast to these policies and programs, the ‘‘Final Solution’’ became embedded in the total administrative apparatus; as one German witnessed at Stalag  when Jews were being sorted out and executed, it all ran automatically (‘‘Das Ganze lief sozusagen automatisch ab’’).111 Regional leaders and
functionaries who felt uneasy about the massacres found ways to adapt to the
genocide. Even at the lowest levels of the hierarchy one could play a part in the
Holocaust without dirtying one’s own hands. In other words, one could avoid
officially authorizing murder through oral orders and gestures (nodding and
the like), or one could find bloodthirstier types among the Germans and the indigenous population to do the more gruesome and tiresome work, such as killing children and searching for Jews in hiding. The Nazi approach to mass mur
The Machinery of Destruction
der was systematic and highly coordinated, but this destructive machine was
not operated by ‘‘automatons.’’ Rather it functioned in the hands of dedicated
professionals who sought to develop a ‘‘frictionless’’ killing process, one that
afforded them some psychological distance from the killing, one that was efficient enough for large-scale massacres, and one that would impress superiors.
The Machinery of Destruction
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Chapter 7 Himmler’s Hegewald Colony
Nazi Resettlement Experiments
and the Volksdeutsche
Who would have dreamed ten years ago that we would be holding an SS meeting in a village named Hegewald, situated near
the Jewish-Russian city of Shitomir. . . . This Germanic East extending as far as the Urals must be cultivated like a hothouse of
Germanic blood. . . . The next generations of Germans and history will not remember how it was done, but rather the goal.
—Heinrich Himmler, 16 September 1942
On  September  Heinrich Himmler, Reich leader of the
SS and police and the commissioner for ‘‘the strengthening of Germandom,’’
gave a sixty-minute speech to an audience of senior SS and police leaders. The
conference was convened at the secret field headquarters that he named ‘‘Hegewald,’’ a term roughly meaning ‘‘game reserve’’ but in this context referring
to an SS-Volksdeutsche colony.1 For historians of Nazi Germany, Himmler’s
speech and its historical context reveal several significant aspects of the Nazi
colonial vision of race and space in Ukraine. First, on this occasion Himmler
announced to the SS and police leaders of the East that , Volhynian Germans would be concentrated in the Hegewald settlement. The project was inspired by Hitler, who had observed many ‘‘Aryan types’’ laboring in the fields
and villages around his Werwolf bunker. In Hitler’s eyes, these peasants were
the descendants of Goths; he therefore reasoned, ‘‘Only German should be spoken here.’’ 2
Like many German imperialists and ideologues at the time (if not earlier),
Hitler looked to Germany’s eastern frontier as the ‘‘natural’’ space for expansion.3 However, unlike his predecessors, Hitler wedded the forces of the traditional Drang nach Osten to a radical, racial worldview, forcefully arguing that the
push to the East was a biological imperative for Germans. In Hitler’s Weltanschauung, race and nation were one in the same. Wherever Germans resided,
he argued, the Third Reich had claims to these individuals. In other words, the
borders of the German nation were not fixed by common political, social, or
cultural institutions, but instead by a vague combination of pseudoscientific
and mythic notions of race.
Like their racial theories and practices, Nazi utopian notions of a Ukrainian or eastern paradise contained their own ambiguities and prejudices. For
the Nazis, soil held two meanings. It was the source of economic—primarily
agricultural—wealth for the empire as well as a metaphor for the cultivation of
the German race. The proposed German-only rural paradise was also to be the
site of modern industrial enterprises, labor camps, autobahn networks, and
defense fortifications. There was, as historian Alan Steinweis has stressed, ‘‘an
inherent contradiction in this marriage of racial utopianism and modern technology. Romantic notions of self-sufficient, racially superior pioneers moving
east to settle the frontier were hard to reconcile with centralized planning and
direction, technocracy, and big industry.’’ 4 Another feature of Nazi colonialism was its gendered stereotyping and roles. As historian Elizabeth Harvey
has elucidated in her study of Reich female agents of Germanization in Poland, Nazism ‘‘simultaneously exalted womanly concerns as national concerns,
lauded women’s caring energies, and harnessed them to a racist and chauvinistic pan-German vision of expansion and domination.’’ 5 Such ideological
contradictions and gendered visions were revealed when German central and
peripheral leaders implemented experimental colonization programs in Zhytomyr.
In his Hegewald speech, Himmler presented a new spatial concept that
differed from the larger ethnic German settlements being created in Nazioccupied Poland. In Lublin, for example, Himmler’s loyal henchman SS and
police leader Odilo Globocnik carried out the most aggressive operations
to transform his district into the European center of Volksdeutsche farms,
Nazi death camps, and SS-run industrial enterprises.6 By contrast, Himmler’s
own pet project at Hegewald was conceived of as, in his words, a settlement
‘‘pearl.’’ 7 This ‘‘pearl’’ was actually a cluster of ethnic German-run farms and
SS garrisons that would eventually expand like a ‘‘string of pearls’’ into a defensive line that would protect Germans from the ‘‘Asiatic hordes.’’ Himmler’s decision to create Hegewald was as pragmatic as it was ideological. The
location had been a former Soviet air base with useful railway and communications connections. In early October  Himmler surveyed the site, and
about a month later plans were under way to turn this air base into his own
elaborate SS-police compound, housing over , SS men and extensive security installations.8 To Himmler, it made perfect sense to consolidate the region’s Volhynian Germans around this area: here they would come under SS
Himmler’s Hegewald Colony

control and cultivate the richest black soil in Ukraine, as well as the German
race.
The timing of Himmler’s Hegewald speech was significant as well. It
marked a turning point in the history of Nazi resettlement experiments, which
had been gathering momentum during . An increasing number of Nazi
Party activists had descended on the Zhytomyr region to establish educational
and relief programs, especially schools and birthing facilities. More numerous were the SS and police forces and Sonderkommando Russland officials.
The  SS men who worked for the Sonderkommando Russland in Ukraine
stemmed from at least five of Himmler’s agencies (the Reich Commission for
the Strengthening of Germandom, the Race and Settlement Office, the Economic Administration Main Office, the Volksdeutsche Liaison Office, and the
SD).9 Many came to Ukraine with two years of experience in Poland managing
the movement of Jews, Poles, and ethnic Germans there. Altogether his staff
represented a diverse grouping of ‘‘experts’’ in demography, cartography, population movement, agricultural economy, forced labor, industry, and policing.
They headed to the Black Sea region of Odessa and Crimea to assist the socalled Black Sea Germans, but they kept headquarters in the offices of Higher
SS and Police Leader Prützmann in Kiev and near Himmler in Zhytomyr.10 By
September  Himmler had at his immediate disposal ideological campaigners and the manpower, expertise, and matériel needed to implement a resettlement program like Hegewald.
Another factor that influenced the timing of the formation of Hegewald was
the increase in Soviet partisan attacks against ethnic German farmers in the region. These assaults alarmed Nazi leaders, including Hitler and Himmler, who
often discussed strategies for dealing with the ‘‘partisan menace’’ during meetings in their headquarters. In order to protect (‘‘hegen’’) the German race, they
concentrated the Volksdeutsche in defense settlements near their headquarters. Himmler agreed with local leaders that the best time to carry out such a
disruptive population transfer would be in the late autumn of , after the
harvest had been brought in.
Most importantly, Nazi leaders believed that the necessary ‘‘preparatory
work’’ for resettling the region was basically complete. By August , they
had totally destroyed the Jewish communities in the designated resettlement
space and ‘‘cleansed’’ it of other so-called undesirable elements, including a
small population of Roma. Ukrainians were also deported by the thousands to
forced labor camps outside the area and in the Reich. In Himmler’s Hegewald
speech, he referred obliquely to these criminal acts when he stated ‘‘how’’ the

Himmler’s Hegewald Colony
‘‘Jewish-Russian’’ city of Zhytomyr became German. He reassured his men that
future generations and history would not remember these acts, but rather applaud their outcome. Thus the German momentum behind the formation of
Volksdeutsche settlements like Hegewald climaxed in the latter half of .
Flushed with the prospect of victory in the East, Himmler boldly pursued his
colonial dreams with a presumptuous eye to the future, envisioning his Aryan
successors full of appreciation for the ‘‘sacrifices’’ of his generation.11 Many
of the local leaders outside the Nazi ‘‘inner circle,’’ however, doubted the ultimate success of these Lebensraum schemes.
The formation of Hegewald was a controversial affair that exposed the real
centers of power among the Nazi elite as well as the chimera of Nazi racialcolonial dreams. Many of the contradictions and tensions that lay beneath
Hitler’s vague theories about an Aryan ‘‘living space’’ in the East revealed themselves at the local level, the level of praxis. The local commissariat and economic leaders disagreed with their superiors, who ordered them to grant ethnic
Germans leading positions as mayors, policemen, and collective farm leaders,
because the Volksdeutsche constituted the most impoverished and least skilled
sector of the population. To many Germans posted in the region, the ethnic
Germans seemed to fit the pejorative European notion of an ‘‘Easterner’’ rather
than the Nazi image of a cultured Aryan.12 The regional commissars in the
civilian zones of occupied Ukraine argued that full-scale colonization should
occur after the war.
The constraints of war thwarted Nazi colonial experiments, but the course
of these experiments was not steered entirely by the war. The story of Hegewald, one of the most celebrated colonies in its day but largely unknown to
postwar scholars, casts light on some of the more significant aspects of Nazi
and Holocaust history. It demonstrates how the German administration in the
East functioned, particularly how the realization of Hitler’s ideological vision
of Lebensraum was hampered by pragmatic concerns, institutional rivalries,
and mixed German perceptions of the ‘‘East.’’ Why has so little been written
to date on this topic, especially given Hegewald’s wartime significance as a
top-secret headquarters and center of resettlement planning in Ukraine? 13 Certainly the lack of available documentation has hindered scholarly research, an
obstacle that has been recently overcome partially by the opening of former
Soviet regional archives. But source material has not been the only inhibiting
factor. The history of the Volksdeutsche has been further complicated by the
fact that the ethnic Germans were both the blatant beneficiaries of Nazism as
well as its victims. As the new local elites in the regional apparatus of the Nazi
Himmler’s Hegewald Colony

Lebensraum, they also played an instrumental role in the Holocaust by identifying their Jewish neighbors, translating anti-Jewish decrees, and even assisting in the mass murder. During the Cold War, German scholars, politicians
and Russian-German émigrés in America lobbied on behalf of the ethnic Germans who suffered under the Soviets, while they ignored the significant role the
Volksdeutsche played as collaborators in the ‘‘Final Solution’’ and other Nazi
occupation policies in the East.14
Only recently has the topic of Nazi resettlement schemes in the East attracted the attention of Holocaust scholars, thanks largely to Rolf-Dieter Müller’s and Götz Aly’s work on the planners, technocrats and regional SS-police
leaders involved in Generalplan Ost.15 Few would dispute that the essence of
Nazi power was destructive, but the ‘‘logic’’ of this brutality is oversimplified
by scholarship that describes ‘‘the Holocaust of the Jews, genocide of Soviet
POWs, euthanasia, and criminal occupation policies in Poland and Russia altogether as elements and consequences of Generalplan Ost.’’ 16 For the ‘‘social engineers’’ discussed by Aly, the dilemmas of space and material shortages served to push Nazi anti-Jewish policy toward genocide. While this may
have been a motivating factor in Poland, in Nazi-occupied Ukraine (home to
over , ethnic Germans) the links between the Holocaust and resettlement schemes were more tenuous. Regional leaders, like the commissars and
SS-police district chiefs, approached these two occupation policies very differently and they rarely made causal connections between the two.17 Why did
local leaders, on the one hand, ‘‘succeed’’ in bringing about the Holocaust, but,
on the other hand, fail at the task of rehabilitating their ‘‘racial brethren?’’ 18
What do Volksdeutsche colonization schemes in Ukraine tell us about the varying levels of ideological commitment that local Nazi leaders held toward the
regime’s racial goals?
Initial ‘‘Germanization’’ Effort
Over the years, as Himmler built up his police empire, he also acquired
a sprawling bureaucracy of offices dedicated to the cause of ethnic Germans
abroad. Shortly after the outbreak of the war in , Hitler named Himmler,
who was already in charge of the SS Race and Settlement Office (Rasse and
Siedlungs-Hauptamt, RuSHA), the Reich commissioner for the strengthening
of Germandom. With this appointment, Himmler took over the Ethnic German Liaison Office (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, VoMi), which was the leading
agency coordinating Nazi Party, SD, and Foreign Office campaigns for ethnic
 Himmler’s Hegewald Colony
Germans residing across Eastern and Southeastern Europe. VoMi was one of
four SS agencies dedicated to ethnic German and resettlement affairs in the
occupied territories.19 In , this agency combed the newly conquered Polish
territory for ethnic Germans and categorized them in a register known as the
German People’s List.20
During Operation Barbarossa, a VoMi field office was set up at Zhytomyr
(led by Obersturmführer Erwin Müller) under the auspices of the secret Sonderkommando Russland operation. The aims of this special task force were,
first, to determine who within the local population was racially valuable and,
then, to survey and designate the best space for later SS colonization, and to
combine this work with the establishment of regional SS-police offices. In its
first few months of work, Himmler’s ethnic German Liaison office registered
over , ethnic Germans in the region, the largest number ascertained in
German-occupied Ukraine until that time.21 Although Horst Hoffmeyer’s Sonderkommando R forces would later find a larger number of ethnic Germans
residing in Dnipropetrovs’k and Romanian-controlled Transnistria, they maintained their headquarters near Himmler at Hegewald.22
Yet as influential as Himmler was, he did not achieve supreme control over
the Volksdeutsche. Away from Hegewald, less prominent Nazi resettlement
and Germanization initiatives were carried out by Nazi Party and commissariat officials. The Reich minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred
Rosenberg, set up a special Volksdeutsche commission under Karl Stumpp, the
established scholar and demographer of ethnic Germans in Russia.23 Stumpp
arrived in Zhytomyr with the Rear Army’s intelligence office at the end of August ; he screened the POWs for ethnic Germans who could serve as informers and translators. While Stumpp supplied the military with ethnic German collaborators, his main objective was to compile lengthy surveys about the
composition and recent history of the ethnic German population. By the time
he arrived in Zhytomyr, Stumpp had assembled a staff of nearly ninety ethnic
Germans, whom he used to investigate the ethnic German villages around the
city, concentrating on the districts of Novohrad-Volyns’kyi and Korosten’.24
While Stumpp and his men were busy surveying the ethnic German communities and filling out lengthy questionnaires, Nazi Party leaders attached to
the National Socialist People’s Welfare Agency (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, NSV) also arrived in Zhytomyr during September and began their
‘‘charity’’ work.25 One of the NSV’s immediate goals was to secure foodstuffs
and material goods for the ethnic Germans. They found ample material in the
SS storehouses of Jewish belongings, first from Zhytomyr’s massacred Jews,
Himmler’s Hegewald Colony

then from Kiev’s Jews. Later, in July , they arranged for shipments of Jewish belongings to Zhytomyr from as far away as France. Nazi Party activists in
the Zhytomyr region who worked on behalf of the ethnic Germans also relied
on Gauleiter in Germany to conduct charity drives, and made appeals to private
German business firms to donate material.26 Their greatest source for outfitting the Volksdeutsche, however, was the Jews. In fact, the NSV began its campaign in Ukraine by distributing about thirty tons of linens, clothing, shoes,
dishes, and other items that the German police confiscated from Zhytomyr’s
Jews after the massacre of  September .27
The work conducted by Stumpp (a Rosenberg agent) and the NSV (under
the aegis of the Nazi Party) differed significantly from that of VoMi (associated
with Himmler’s SS). Under the leadership of Hoffmeyer and Erwin Müller, the
VoMi commandos pursued their ‘‘urgent task to consolidate and protect the
ethnic Germans in order to prevent further decay of the race.’’ They focused on
the largest ethnic German villages and communities, not on the remote areas
where individual ethnic Germans lived among Ukrainians. VoMi teams also
sought to activate the ethnic Germans on the spot by registering them, classifying them into racial categories, distributing German identification papers,
and establishing or reopening German schools. VoMi leaders picked out the
‘‘reliable’’ youths and inculcated them with Nazi propaganda, discipline, and
obedience. Those who passed muster had a ‘‘bright’’ future in one of Himmler’s
organizations. Usually their first assignment was as an informant to the SD.28
For those youngsters under ten years of age, immediate Nazi educational training began with language instruction because the Soviets had closed German
schools in . Local VoMi leaders forced the children to learn the Nazi greeting, the history of the Nazi Party, and ‘‘the life of the Führer,’’ to sing German
songs, and to listen to Hitler’s speeches. Boys in particular were singled out for
paramilitary exercises and the Hitler Youth. One of VoMi’s goals was to make
the school the center of the village and therefore of Nazi-style Germanization.29
In their effort to complete the initial registration and ‘‘reeducation’’ of the
region’s Volksdeutsche, the three main organizations—VoMi, the Stumpp commission, and the NSV—worked side by side, but not in unison. They vied for
the support of the local commissars, who could provide them with muchneeded resources, and they competed with one another for recognition from
Nazi headquarters in Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, and Berlin. Their biggest common
obstacle in the first months of the occupation, however, was the ambiguity
surrounding the German policy toward the ethnic Germans, and the general
apathy among civil and military leaders who thought that the ethnic Germans
were more of a burden than an asset.
 Himmler’s Hegewald Colony
Sowing the Seeds
In March , after about three months of commissariat rule in Zhytomyr, the chief of the regional civil administration, General Commissar Klemm,
wrote his first memorandum on ethnic German policy to his city and district
commissars. ‘‘According to Koch’s instructions,’’ he wrote, ‘‘the ethnic Germans, who had no chance to resettle to Germany and suffered as victims of the
Soviet regime, should be treated with respect and appreciation; they should be
valued.’’ He continued, ‘‘It is known that there are ethnic Germans who are not
willing to work and are not assiduous; therefore, steps will be taken in order
to provide them immediately with the needed schooling and education.’’ 30 Intensive German language instruction was certainly a priority, but Nazi officials
had other educational goals in mind.31
Regional campaigners in the commissariat administration, the NSV, and
VoMi agreed that educational efforts were best directed at those children whose
minds and manners could be most easily molded. They also reasoned pragmatically that if the children were cared for in Reich-style schools, then the
parents would be free to labor in the fields. The first tasks Nazi leaders confronted in this plan for Germanization were to establish a kindergarten and to
secure teachers from the Reich.32 In fact, the ‘‘experimental’’ kindergarten programs for ethnic Germans in the Eastern Occupied Territories began in Zhytomyr. The schools were run largely by Reich German women whom the Nazi
Party mobilized for service in the East. In contrast to their female counterparts
in the German commissariat offices who worked as secretaries, the educators
worked rather independently in the field.33
Following Hitler and Himmler’s arrival in the region in July , these
female Reich welfare workers (ages eighteen to twenty-one) flowed into
the area. They traveled to remote rural areas around Zhytomyr, establishing
schools, birthing centers, and nursing stations.34 By the end of September
, these efforts had led to the creation of forty-one permanent and seasonal
Volksdeutsche kindergartens in the region, and had resulted in the training of
eighty-six local Volksdeutsche girls to serve as schoolteachers.35 In addition,
midwives and nurses from the Reich set up infant care stations where they
taught ethnic German women about the ‘‘racial hygienic’’ principles of nutrition and cleanliness in order to increase fertility and reproduction.36
The Nazi Party–led kindergarten and infant care programs reveal two significant aspects of this regional campaign of Germanization. First, German
officials sought to assimilate the youth according to Nazi racial tenets, hence
the large number of kindergartens and ethnic German orphanages in ZhytoHimmler’s Hegewald Colony

myr. Once in these schools, Nazi educators taught the ethnic Germans that
the Jews had set out to destroy the German people, and that the war was being
fought against the Jews who surrounded and threatened to starve the Germans.
To protect the German race, they advised young ethnic Germans to follow the
Führer’s example and neither smoke nor drink. They were warned to avoid mixing with non-Aryans because mixed marriages were a violation of racial purity.
During medical examinations, Nazi doctors and nurses looked for the presence
of certain hereditary diseases, and as a ‘‘protective racial measure’’ made plans
to have these ‘‘diseased’’ youth sterilized.37 And though the educational emphasis for both sexes was the loyalty to the Reich and obligation to work, Nazi
courses revealed the more gendered roles that were to be filled. Boys learned
paramilitary exercises, while girls took infant care and homemaking courses.
Simply put, the boys were to become soldiers for the Reich, while the girls were
to serve as ‘‘baby machines.’’
These Nazi missionaries sought to convert Zhytomyr’s ‘‘racially acceptable’’
ethnic Germans into productive workers in a manner that was reminiscent of
the Wilhelmine era’s Protestant-run workhouses and ‘‘Erziehung zur Arbeit’’
campaigns. Yet the targeting of children and the ideological content of the
Nazi campaign more closely resembled the fascist, totalitarian movements of
its day. Volksdeutsche children came home from school with photos of Hitler,
Swastika flags, and Nazi songs.38 Raising the racial consciousness of the Volksdeutsche, these educators argued, could not be forced but could only come
through the Party.39 They propagated notions of German racial superiority that
were virulently anti-Semitic, nationalistic, centered on loyalty to the Führer,
and based on a work ethic of extreme proportions.40
On the other hand, those ethnic Germans who failed to accept or conform
to the Nazi worldview, or who physically did not meet Nazi racial standards,
received no sympathy from the Reich German campaigners. For example, a
deputy commissar in the political department of the Zhytomyr city administration advised VoMi in February  to strike an ethnic German female
from the German People’s List. She had applied for a marriage license at the
commissar’s office, but since she wished to marry a Ukrainian whom she had
come to know after the Nazi occupation and ‘‘her attitude is not of the kind
that one must demand of an ethnic German,’’ then, this official wrote, ‘‘she
will be denied that status and treated like an inferior Ukrainian.’’ 41 In another
case, Herbert Hafke, an ethnic German who joined the Schutzmannschaft in
Koziatyn, was arrested for stealing produce from some local Ukrainians in
October . Hafke was supposed to be deported to Germany as a forced
laborer, but he escaped from jail and was caught in April . After an in Himmler’s Hegewald Colony
terrogation by the Koziatyn SS and police district chief, Lieutenant Heinrich
Behrens, he was sentenced to death, because Behrens argued, Hafke ‘‘is a bandit of the worst kind and can in no way be accepted into the German Volksgemeinschaft.’’ Furthermore, Behrens wrote, ‘‘he is married to a Ukrainian and
in my view feels himself to be more Ukrainian than ethnic German.’’ 42 Reich
officials who felt in any way betrayed by the ‘‘non-German’’ conduct of Volksdeutsche thus clearly viewed them as both odious racial defectives and serious
threats to the system.
Nonetheless, members of the ethnic German population were granted certain advantages that placed them in a privileged category, seeding resentment
within the larger Ukrainian population. Volksdeutsche were supposed to receive at least double the rations of other locals and three times more than
the Jews. If available, their rations might include the most sought after items
of meat, salt, sugar, and butter.43 Ethnic Germans were generally protected
from the brutality of the Ukrainian Schutzmannschaften and the German
Order Police. In the cities and larger towns, the Germans gave them the best
living quarters, often former Jewish apartments. In April  Koch’s deputy
Helmuth von Wedelstädt ordered that in public decrees the Volksdeutsche
must be singled out and given special instructions, including exemptions from
taxes and forced labor.44 With few exceptions, the dreaded labor commissioners who raided the villages avoided the ethnic German communities. In the
city of Zhytomyr, the VoMi founded two special ethnic German shops where
Volksdeutsche could obtain scarce items.45 Gebietskommissar Hans Schmidt
opened a similar shop in Novohrad-Volyns’kyi.46
Most of these privileges contrasted with the tragic losses and sacrifices of
others. Consistent with Himmler’s orders on the distribution of Jewish property and then Commander Roques’s order of  August , in the Nazi Party’s
guidelines for work in the Zhytomyr Commissariat, activists were told that
available Jewish property should go first to the ethnic Germans and then to
Ukrainians.47 The distribution of Jewish apartments, clothing, furniture, bedding, and other personal items mirrored the Nazis’ racial hierarchies, with the
Reich officials receiving the choicest items, followed by the Volksdeutsche, and
then Ukrainian collaborators.
Himmler’s ‘‘Garden’’—Hegewald
Before Himmler introduced his Hegewald project in September , the
district German leaders in and around Zhytomyr had concentrated most of
the Volksdeutsche into small communities. They agreed with Himmler that reHimmler’s Hegewald Colony

settlement should occur in order to prevent racial mixing and to further Partyled educational and welfare work, but they were reluctant to undertake a largescale program that might jeopardize the region’s economy and promote social
unrest. Despite their misgivings, Himmler—who had the upper hand in ethnic German policy-making and exerted his direct influence over the Zhytomyr
region from Hegewald—pushed through the resettlement action around his
headquarters. Once Hegewald reached its full population capacity, it was declared an ethnic German district to be governed not by Rosenberg’s commissars but by Himmler’s SS.48
The creation of resettled areas like Hegewald represented a calculated
attempt by Himmler to increase his power over policies and local administration in the East. In addition to controlling an empire of SS economic enterprises, police forces, and labor camps, Himmler placed himself at the
forefront of ‘‘Blood and Soil’’ social engineering in what was to be a new, thoroughly Germanized land. Yet the creation of a new eastern colony in Zhytomyr was not Himmler’s sole concern. An upswing in partisan activity in the
region also prompted Himmler to think of Hegewald in defensive terms as an
‘‘organic, racial’’ strongpoint of ethnic German blood. As single-mindedly as
he had pursued the destruction of the Jews to this point, Himmler would now
force the issue of German colonization in the East by aggressively promoting
the Hegewald settlement despite the opposition of rivals like Alfred Rosenberg.
Hegewald was in effect his colony, and as he pushed through its creation, he
established another similar settlement near Lublin in Poland.
As was typical, Himmler’s first step toward achieving his goal was securing the support of Hitler. On  July , the day after Himmler arrived in
Zhytomyr, he traveled to Vinnytsia to meet with his Führer. During this meeting at Hitler’s Werwolf bunker, one of the topics they discussed was the plight
and fate of the Volksdeutsche.49 About two weeks later (probably on  August) Himmler returned to Hitler’s headquarters for a conference of VoMi
and SS officials.50 During this meeting, Himmler touted the ‘‘successes’’ of
VoMi in Transnistria while condemning Rosenberg’s commissars as a bunch of
overpaid bureaucrats who worked few hours and took long vacations. Himmler argued that VoMi had already proven itself in Transnistria, where VoMi
commandos had rapidly resettled nearly , Volksdeutsche. Furthermore,
Himmler warned, partisan attackers jeopardized the ethnic German families
in the northern parts of the Zhytomyr region; the Volksdeutsche needed to
be ‘‘protected.’’ With the fleet of trucks and vehicles at his disposal at the
Hegewald-SS compound, SS forces could quickly move the population into
 Himmler’s Hegewald Colony
a secured area. After successfully convincing Hitler of the value of his plan,
Himmler gained the necessary approval to form the Hegewald settlement.51
In the evening of  August and during the next day, Himmler convened
leading SS officials at his headquarters to introduce his scheme. He assigned
Ulrich Greifelt (head of the staff headquarters of the Reich Commission for the
Strengthening of Germandom) and VoMi commandos to direct the first relocation of , ethnic Germans from the northern ‘‘partisan-infested’’ areas of
the region (Bazar, Malyn, Ovruch, and Jemyl’chyne) into Hegewald. The thousands of Ukrainians to be deported from their homes in the Hegewald area
were to be dumped in an area as yet to be determined. The ethnic German
families would be resettled in about  villages along the main roadway from
Zhytomyr to Berdychiv. The central point of the settlement would be Himmler’s command post, because Hitler wanted Reich officials to move out of the
cities into rural barracks and quarters as a further step toward transforming the
region into ethnic German farming settlements and military strongpoints. SS
officials planned to bring in an additional , ethnic Germans who would
be placed along the major highways under construction in the area.52
One of the participants in the Hegewald planning meeting of  August
, the senior commander of the Order Police for Ukraine, Otto von Oelhafen, was put in charge of another aspect of the program: the formation of
ethnic German police units. Oelhafen ordered that suitable ethnic German
men be formed into closed units, known as Selbstschutz or Self-Defense/Protection units. Ethnic German police squads, one of the topics of Himmler’s conference with Hitler, had already been formed in Romanian-controlled Transnistria where they had been actively involved in the ‘‘Final Solution.’’ 53
In the Zhytomyr region, however, the Selbstschutz played a less prominent
role in the Holocaust. Instead, they served as regular Order Police forces over
the ethnic German villages, thereby relieving Reich Germans of this duty and
also preventing the possible ‘‘racial mixing’’ that might occur between ethnic
German female villagers and the much larger native police force, the Ukrainian Schutzmannschaften.54 Plans for increasing the Selbstschutz materialized
later at Hegewald, where Oelhafen placed about , ethnic German men into
police formations, established four Selbstschutz schools, and began training
an additional , men.55
As Himmler worked out the technical details of the resettlement action,
he also prepared himself for a probable run-in with his rival Rosenberg. First
Himmler openly censured Rosenberg for his mishandling of the ethnic Germans in Ukraine, and, in the same breath, he asserted his own role as the
Himmler’s Hegewald Colony

master of resettlement schemes.56 Then, on  September , Himmler presumptuously ordered Rosenberg’s subordinate, Reich Commissar Koch, ‘‘to
Germanize with great haste the ethnic Germans living around Hegewald, Eichenhain, and Korosten’ ’’ (for example, around his, Hitler’s, and Göring’s headquarters). His authority over Koch in this matter, Himmler wrote, was based on
his appointment by Hitler as the Reich commissioner for the strengthening of
Germandom and as the commander of antipartisan warfare in the civilian occupied zones. With Hitler’s backing and the powerful SS-police agencies at his
disposal, Himmler went a step further by demanding more land from Koch for
his SS colony at Hegewald. He specified that the farmland allotted to each ethnic German family be increased from earlier plans of between ten and twenty
hectares to between thirty and forty hectares. When Rosenberg found out about
Himmler’s orders to Koch, he immediately challenged Himmler’s authority,
and a typical Nazi ‘‘paper war’’ ensued.57 While this power struggle took its
course in Berlin, the actual resettlement moved forward in Ukraine.58 Koch’s
chief of food and agriculture, Hellmut Körner, had already been sent to Zhytomyr to meet with Himmler’s newly appointed chief of the Special Staff for Resettlement, SS-Oberführer Theo Henschel.59 Henschel had worked in the Race
and Settlement Main Office since the early s and had extensive experience
managing property confiscations, deportations, and resettlement schemes in
Poland.
In this meeting, Körner, Henschel, and agricultural experts from the local
commissar’s office determined more precisely who would be relocated and
when. First they had to plan for the evacuation of an estimated , nonGermans (mostly Ukrainians) who lived in the area designated for the first
stream of ethnic German settlers (, families, a total of , ethnic Germans). According to Himmler’s proposed increase of farmland, additional
areas were to be evacuated along the Zhytomyr-Vinnytsia roadway. Land distribution to the ethnic German settlers depended on their demonstrated productivity. Most would start out with one to six hectares of land until they
proved their diligence. Then the holdings would be expanded to no more than
twenty-five hectares. Under the management of the Reich agricultural monopoly (Landbewirtschaftungsgesellschaft, LBGU), reserve farmland would be
tilled by Ukrainian and White Russian laborers, but it would be controlled by
German overseers. Once the Volksdeutsche were relocated, they lost all rights
to their former homes and farms. The evacuated Ukrainians would not be
moved to the abandoned ethnic German homes in the region, which was an
earlier proposal, but brought to labor camps in southern Russia.60
On  September the chief of the Race and Settlement Main Office, Otto Hof Himmler’s Hegewald Colony
Himmler inspecting cotton fields in Ukraine, fall of 
(U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of James Blevins, #)
mann, celebrated ‘‘a German harvest’’ with the thirty-five SS farmers stationed
near Zhytomyr. He called the men ‘‘Pioneers of Germandom in the East’’—
revolutionaries charged with creating something new. As such, they were to
always behave decently, Hofmann stated, and when confronted with important
decisions should always ask themselves, ‘‘What would the Führer or Reichsführer do in their position.’’ 61
A month later, on  October, the resettlement action began. German police
units of Higher SS and Police Leader Hans-Adolf Prützmann, members of
the local gendarmerie, and VoMi officials rounded up , non-Germans
from the area and, along with some livestock, placed them on  freight
cars bound for Dnipropetrovs’k. At the same time columns, or as the Nazis
called them, ‘‘treks,’’ of ethnic Germans totaling , persons (, men,
, women, and , children) moved into Hegewald from various points in
Zhytomyr’s northern districts. Both the ethnic Germans and Ukrainians were
forcibly moved under police guard.62 NSV leaders provided relief for the ethnic Germans at various stopovers along the way. For the ‘‘trek’’ of , ethnic
Germans from Ovruch, five villages were reserved as overnight and rest areas
during the journey to Hegewald; the inhabitants of these villages were simply
Himmler’s Hegewald Colony

Ethnic German Settlement Area, named ‘‘Hegewald’’ (preservation forest). The circles on the map
represent the Volksdeutsche communities, the size of the communities in hectares, and the number
of local industries (such as dairies, tanneries, smoke houses, distilleries, slaughterhouses, textile
mills). The map was issued by SS-Colonel Jungkunz who was the District Captain of Hegewald,
 November . Source: Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R//, courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum, RG .M.
pulled from their homes and placed in temporary camps; many were shipped
to the Reich as forced laborers. The NSV provided ten nurses from its staff to
assist the ethnic German mothers with their infants.63
Once the ethnic Germans arrived at Hegewald, SS farming specialists allotted the land and advised the ethnic Germans about farming techniques. The
ethnic German farms were subjected to high SS quotas and random confiscations of milk and other produce.64 The land that was not agriculturally rich was
slotted for SS factories, where Ukrainian forced laborers worked under guard.
On  October Himmler inspected the new ethnic German villages in Hegewald. When he returned to his field headquarters, he ordered the immediate
shipment of about , shoes and textiles to the Volksdeutsche in Hegewald.
This was in addition to another shipment, originating from the storehouses at
Lublin and Auschwitz, that was scheduled to arrive in time for Christmas.65 The
first step of the Hegewald resettlement action was virtually completed by early
November , leaving just one group of  families residing in Radomyshl’
to be moved into the enclave.
Before it became public knowledge that Hegewald existed, General Commissar Leyser sent a memo to his deputies on  November explaining that
the area south of Zhytomyr toward Berdychiv was now an independent district for ethnic Germans, to be administered by ethnic German mayors and
led by a Reich German SS ‘‘district captain,’’ not a commissar.66 Leyser added
that because the area was populated by Volksdeutsche, it would be unnecessary in the future to send memoranda to the Hegewald SS–district captain
about Ukrainians or Russians.67 About a month later, on  December ,
Hegewald was officially declared a distinct administrative unit exempt from
the jurisdiction of Rosenberg’s ministry; it was  square miles in size with
a population of , Volksdeutsche. The last ethnic Germans to be resettled
in Hegewald came from Kiev during March ,68 bringing the total population to , persons. They lived in twenty-eight villages organized around
seven SS-agricultural economic bases with names such as Troja, Maienfeld,
Neu Posen, and Am Hügel, sixty-three communal industries, and an SS supply
house.69 SS and Party officials initiated training and educational programs for
the Volksdeutsche so that the largely unskilled ethnic Germans learned how
to be carpenters, auto mechanics, telegraph operators, tailors, and the like.70
Senior-level Party members made speaking tours of the settlement, which was
expanded to nearly  square kilometers in early .71
Himmler’s Hegewald Colony

The Failure of Nazi Lebensraum Plans
The publicity and fanfare surrounding the establishment of the Hegewald
settlement trumpeted its success. Yet the internal government correspondence
and reports from across the various agencies involved in the ‘‘rescue’’ of the
Volksdeutsche are filled with complaints and criticisms. One Nazi Party activist, Maria Cormann, calculated that the Volksdeutsche rations were as inadequate as those allotted to prison inmates. Months after her alarming report,
the Volksdeutsche survived on a paltry diet that was certainly better than a
prisoner’s but not as hearty as the Reich Germans’.72 In stark contrast to the
German implementation of the ‘‘Final Solution’’ and other criminal policies of
Nazi rule in Zhytomyr, the German crusade to ‘‘rescue’’ and ‘‘Germanize’’ the
region’s Volksdeutsche population was a campaign that created more conflict
than consensus within the German administration. The kinds of institutional
and ideological clashes surrounding these programs revealed just how ‘‘inefficient’’ the Nazi system could be. In the area of educational efforts the SS, the
commissars, and Party leaders generally cooperated, but there was much friction between the commissars and local SS leaders about the social and economic repercussions of the vast resettlement actions that Himmler introduced.
At the district level, those commissars entrusted with ethnic German populations were left to carry out their own experimental programs, influenced in
varying degrees by the agencies of Himmler, the Nazi Party, and Rosenberg.
German administrators rarely questioned the policy of exploiting and eradicating those deemed inferior, while they remained uncertain of their role in
forming ethnic German colonies and in integrating the Volksdeutsche, whom
they viewed sympathetically but often begrudgingly as a pathetic group. In the
Zhytomyr region, ethnic German policy and programs were centered in the
cities of Zhytomyr, Berdychiv, and Vinnytsia and in a few northern districts
along the Belorussian border. They did not consume the attention of the Nazi
administration in the way that the genocidal campaign against the Jews, the
forced labor drives, and, eventually, the antipartisan warfare did.
One of the more revealing aspects of the failure of ethnic German programs
in Zhytomyr was the underlying skepticism among local leaders toward Hitler’s vision of a Lebensraum in the East and Himmler’s colonization schemes.
This skepticism derived from the contradictory Nazi images of the East. Nazi
leaders portrayed this space as both a hotbed of ‘‘Judeo-Bolshevism’’ and a
future Aryan paradise. In carrying out their war of extermination in the East,
Nazi leaders effectively marshaled a deep-seated German contempt for the ‘‘inferior’’ peoples of the East. But building a German consensus around a utopian
 Himmler’s Hegewald Colony
vision of the East as a ‘‘flourishing park landscape’’ and a ‘‘garden of Germanic
blood’’ proved to be a much more difficult undertaking in the context of war,
especially a protracted campaign that was by no means restricted to the front.
The concept of an ‘‘Aryan’’ Volksgemeinschaft and other Nazi appeals centered on the Führer did not effectively integrate Reich and ethnic Germans to
the extent that Party propagandists and Nazi demographers expected. The destructive aspects of the Führer’s Lebensraum policies proved easier to promote
and carry out than the constructive ones. A combination of German prejudices
toward the East and ‘‘eastern peoples,’’ wartime conditions, and the destructive nature of Nazism sabotaged the Volksdeutsche programs in Zhytomyr. In
the end, Himmler found fertile ground in the East not for German colonization, but rather for the Holocaust.
Himmler’s Hegewald Colony

Chapter 8 The Unraveling of Nazi Rule, 1943–1944
Seven of us gathered in my flat in Liubar: the head of the collective farm, an agronomist, a bookkeeper, a driver, a schoolmaster, a mechanic, and me. We started to organize bombing
raids of the Zhytomyr-Fastiv railway lines. Women, including
my wife, were our couriers and helped us identify sources of
arms and locations of other resistance movements. We had to
kill two traitors in our village so that we could work freely.
After that, people were afraid to report underground members
to the Germans.
—Petr Ignat’evich Iunitskii (b. 1912), Zhytomyr, 1996
For the Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, and Jews in Zhytomyr who
managed to survive the German invasion, the Holocaust, the forced labor deportations, and SS-police resettlement actions, it seemed that things could not
possibly get worse. The February  German surrender at Stalingrad instilled
them with renewed hope. But the year that followed turned out to be the worst
of the occupation for all, even the ethnic Germans, who realized that their privileged status placed them in greater danger. Vengeful Ukrainians, Poles, and
Soviet partisans attacked them even as they retreated westward upon the collapse of the commissariat administration in November .
Like the rest of Eastern Europe, the Zhytomyr region became a battlefield
of brutal partisan warfare that was not solely a Nazi-Soviet struggle. Regional
civil wars erupted among various ethnic and political groups (Stalinist, communist, nationalist, Zionist), which on the one hand sought to defeat Nazism
and on the other tried to establish power in the areas once occupied by the
Germans. These regional clashes derived from competing ideological aims as
well as manifested the social backlashes resulting from the Nazi occupation
system. By using local leaders and auxiliaries to carry out their criminal policies and by imposing a new hierarchy based on race, the Germans deepened
and even created new social divisions within the occupied population.1 Many
local leaders abused their limited power, and their affiliation with Nazi policies
aroused additional enmity. Additionally, the commissars themselves ruled in a
dilettantish, often brutally impulsive manner that garnered little respect from
‘‘their subjects.’’ In the spring of , General Commissar Ernst Leyser’s office
reported to Rosenberg that the extreme differences across the region in the way
that the commissars dealt with matters such as religious policy were now causing civil unrest.2 The Germans were unable to retain indigenous staff in their
offices. In  one-third of the Zviahel district commissariat office staff consisted of ethnic Germans who were new hires. Many Ukrainians stopped working for the Germans.3 Thus, in contrast to postwar stereotypes of Ukrainians
—either as mass collaborators or as pro-Soviet partisans—the history of resistance efforts in Zhytomyr reveals that Ukrainian society was far from unified.
The German reaction to local resistance movements and partisan attacks
was characteristically extreme. At Hegewald, Himmler and his SS-police minions took mainly two approaches. They first tried to safeguard the Volksdeutsche by consolidating them into a protected enclave near the secured headquarters. They then planned more sweeping antipartisan raids in designated
areas that were to become ‘‘dead zones.’’ By depopulating the areas where partisans found a haven and local supporters, Nazi leaders reasoned, the partisan
menace would go away. One of the projected ‘‘dead zones’’ in the Zhytomyr
Bezirk was in Polissia, the swampy area bordering Belorussia where from the
start of the Wehrmacht invasion different Ukrainian nationalist factions, Soviet
POWs, and Jews had found refuge and later based their resistance movements
against the Germans.
This chapter traces the rise of organized resistance movements in the region and the Germans’ radical attempts to maintain their hold over Zhytomyr,
first through draconian antipartisan policies and then paradoxically through
anti-Soviet propaganda and incentive appeals that were supposed to galvanize
everyone under the Nazi victory banner. However, as the Nazi system unraveled
in  so did the tattered social fabric of Zhytomyr. Caught in the crossfire of
the Nazi-Soviet struggle, groups and individuals were forced to choose different survival strategies as well as pick sides.
The Emergence of Partisan Movements
Although there were cases of indigenous manipulation of and sabotage
against the German system throughout the occupation period, acts of resistance that were connected to the partisan movements in Zhytomyr became
more widespread in late  and throughout . There are several reasons
for the increase in resistance acts and partisan warfare. Foremost among them
were the forced labor deportations and the protracted war, which fueled antiGerman sentiment and strained the commissars’ ability to govern the vast territory.
The Unraveling of Nazi Rule

In the Zhytomyr region the partisan movement was mainly divided among
the Ukrainian nationalist factions, roving bands of resistance fighters, and
Stalin’s larger partisan brigades deployed from Moscow (for example, the Lenin
Mounted Brigade).4 Actually the largest of these movements, the Soviet one,
contained few communists and even fewer Party members. Other than the
shared belief that the Nazis had to be crushed and pushed out of Eastern
Europe, the Soviet movement was not ideologically unified; it was multiethnic
and not strongly communist. According to historian Amir Weiner’s study of the
war in Vinnytsia, in August  there were , partisans operating in the
city and its surrounding districts, of whom only , (or . percent) were
Communist Party members or candidates for membership. Though the region
was between  and  percent Ukrainian, the Stalin Brigades were only half
Ukrainian, whereas the nationalist forces led by Andrii Mel’nyk and Stepan
Bandera were, as one might guess, mainly Ukrainian (at least  percent).5
Independent resistance cells began forming in the initial months of the
occupation and were composed of communists, Ukrainian nationalists, and
some Jews, who were joined in much larger numbers by Red Army deserters
and POWs.6 At first, these ‘‘resisters’’ were fugitives from the Nazi terror. They
were disorganized and lacked arms to launch any effective campaign. Similarly
the Ukrainian nationalists possessed few guns and explosives, and the movement itself was divided and therefore vulnerable. To their advantage, however,
the Ukrainian nationalists had spent the interwar period in Poland developing
terrorist methods and collaborating with German intelligence offices. They arrived in Ukraine with an inside view of the German system as well as an organizational framework. But even so, they had little leverage: the Germans turned
on the Ukrainian nationalist movement and crushed its local networks in the
fall of  and early .
First, Mel’nyk’s top leaders were assassinated on the streets of Zhytomyr,
most likely by Bandera’s agents, who were assisted by the Germans.7 A month
later, the Germans suppressed Bandera’s movement.8 At the end of November
, Einsatzgruppe C members issued a death warrant against Banderites, declaring them ‘‘enemies of the Reich’’ who were to be ‘‘arrested and after a complete hearing exterminated in the greatest secrecy as pillagers.’’ 9 The German
crackdown intensified in the spring of  when the commissariat’s SS-police
administration was in place. German secret police found and killed Zhytomyr’s
OUN-B leader Roman Marchak at the end of March. Sipo-SD interrogators extracted from a prisoner the location of Bandera’s headquarters in Zhytomyr. On
 February  the German police raided the basement of a bombed-out build-
 The Unraveling of Nazi Rule
ing in Zhytomyr, where they uncovered a false identification printing operation
and dozens of secret files about the nationalists’ underground activities there
as well as in Kiev, Kharkiv, and Poltava. German investigators were incensed
by the discovery of receipts that showed that the nationalists had been selling
forged papers to the Jews. This was not an altruistic rescue operation to save
Jews. In fact, Bandera’s agents had been financing their local activities by extorting money from the Jews, and, in at least one case, they blamed the Jews
when the Germans uncovered caches of arms belonging to Bandera’s underground militia groups.10
The nationalists’ administrative files containing their treasured lists of supporters had fallen into Nazi hands and facilitated the destruction of the movement. Supplied with names and information on where to find the people in
question, the German secret police under Zhytomyr’s commander, Franz
Razesberger, began to arrest and interrogate hundreds of Ukrainians deemed
to be partisan threats.11 At the beginning of April , Razesberger reported
to his superior in Kiev, the Security Police chief for Ukraine, Max Thomas, that
in Zhytomyr they had identified  nationalist suspects and had arrested 
members.12
By the summer of , Ukrainian nationalists who escaped the clutches of
the German secret police were in hiding and waiting for instructions from one
of three nationalist factions led by Bandera, Mel’nyk, and Taras Borovets.13 Like
other nascent resistance movements in the region, they sought out followers,
more arms, and reliable information channels. Attacks against German headquarters in the region’s cities, as well as assassination attempts against German officials and bombings of German offices, occurred sporadically.14
The Germans were well aware of the emerging partisan pockets in the region.15 When the commissars began arriving in November , Roques, the
commander of the Army Group South Rear Area Administration, warned them
that partisan cells were forming in the villages, and that they consisted of Red
Army deserters and Soviet intelligence operatives who were purposely left behind to conduct warfare in the civilian occupied zones. According to German
suspicions, these agents had designated informers in the villages, including
women and girls who worked as laundry women and maids. The women, he
warned, had the task of befriending German officers and soldiers.16 In this
atmosphere of paranoia, the Germans responded to the few initial attacks by
embarking on a strict antipartisan policy that was directed against the entire population (although often their reprisal measures served as a cover for
carrying out the mass murder of Jews). In December  General Commis-
The Unraveling of Nazi Rule

sar Klemm ordered that for every German who was shot at and not injured or
killed, ten civilians were to be executed, and for every German injured or killed
by partisans,  local civilians would be executed.17
During the summer of , instances of sabotage and resistance in the
northern terrain of the commissariat (today in Belarus) steadily increased.18
The German gendarmerie district leader and two gendarmes stationed in El’sk
were murdered by partisans. Consequently, the commander of the Order Police
for the region, Hans Leberecht von Bredow, instituted new prophylactic measures. First he advised his German gendarmes to avoid using bicycles in fields
and forests and to stay on the main roads. Then each month the district police
stations in the region began submitting special partisan-attack summary reports that included the times and locations of the attacks; these reports helped
them track the size and location of the movement.19 When the Germans arrested partisans, they took different courses of action. If the so-called partisan was Jewish, he or she was killed on the spot. If the partisan was part of
the nationalist or Soviet underground, then he or she was interrogated first
and then usually killed.20 Meanwhile, German SS-police and military reinforcements streamed into the area to fight the partisans. On  July  (as part of
Operation Bamberg), units in Mazyr, Korosten’, and in other parts of El’sk destroyed five villages and murdered all of the roughly , inhabitants, except
for the Volksdeutsche and Schutzmänner living in these locales.21
Actually the Germans never had complete control over the northern
stretches of the region along the Pripiat’ River. Under the leadership of C. F.
Malinkov and the command of S. Kovpak (a Ukrainian-born Communist, who
claimed to be a descendent of the Zaporozhian Cossacks), Soviet guerrillas who
had been parachuted into the region established stationary camps along the
border with Belorussia. In the last week of July , Security chief Razesberger
reported to his superior in Kiev, Sipo-SD general Thomas, that Russian parachuters were landing in the areas of Mazyr, Bragin, and Ovruch.22 They attacked
river traffic and destroyed military buildings, including a hospital. In response,
the SD outpost at Ovruch sent out their Einsatzkommandos and discovered,
after apprehending one parachuter, that communications had been established
in Ovruch with Moscow’s central command center. From an intercepted radio
transmission, the SD also learned that a plane with additional men and supplies would be landing in the area. The Germans captured the plane.23 For the
Nazis, the situation did not seem to be improving, despite the increased German presence of Sipo-SD and regular police forces.
During Hitler’s and Himmler’s stay in the region, they often discussed how
to deal with the partisan menace. At the end of July , attention shifted

The Unraveling of Nazi Rule
from the ‘‘Jewish problem’’ (which in Zhytomyr was nearly ‘‘resolved’’) to an
emerging, real threat—the partisans. On  July Himmler, while stationed at
Hegewald, addressed the situation during a dinner with senior SS and police
leaders. He remarked self-confidently, ‘‘As for the partisan danger I will take
care of that too. I do not know yet what I will do, but something will strike me. I
have been thinking about blinding the captured partisans.’’ 24 To further criminalize the partisans (who had begun to make widespread propaganda appeals
to Zhytomyr’s population), Himmler later ordered that the term ‘‘partisan’’ be
replaced with ‘‘bandit.’’ 25
A few weeks after this meeting, Hitler appointed Himmler the commander
of antipartisan warfare in the civilian zones (and rear army areas). On  August  Hitler, who followed the partisan warfare closely through Himmler,
issued a special directive (#). In it, he asserted that ‘‘the destruction of banditry demands active fighting and the most severe measures against everyone
who supports the bandits or participates in the formation of the bandit movement.’’ At the same time, Hitler wrote, the Germans could not avoid relying
on the local population to fight the bandits and therefore German administrators were to rule in a strict but just manner. Those who resisted German rule
were to be so horribly punished that others would be dissuaded from resisting.26 Thus Himmler and German regional leaders were given the go-ahead to
use the ‘‘harshest’’ combat measures.
In the months that followed this directive, German antipartisan policies resulted in the destruction of  villages and the mass murder of more than
, people in the region.27 In December  Higher SS and Police Leader
for Ukraine Prützmann wrote a report about the new Nazi approach to the partisan problem. Owing to the increase in attacks, the SS-police in cooperation
with the Reich Commissariat officials would force out all inhabitants in partisan areas and then bring in German militarized forces. Chiefly targeted were
the swampy areas deemed economically ‘‘hardly useful’’ anyway. According to
Himmler’s instructions for this campaign, all civilians living in or near partisan
‘‘nests’’ who were not shot outright were to be deported en masse to concentration camps or to the Reich for forced labor. However, many were not deported
as ordered and were immediately killed because the local commissars lacked
the transport to send the civilians out of the region; and the commissars feared
that any survivors would join the partisans to take revenge on the Germans.28
According to a Soviet account, in early  the Germans burned to the
ground more than  communities and killed or left homeless thousands of
civilians from these ‘‘dead zones.’’ 29 In March and April , Leyser’s commissars specified in their reports  clashes with partisans, which left over 
The Unraveling of Nazi Rule

peasants homeless; plus several hundred more were dragged away by the partisans.30 Just as the Germans prepared their early  offensives, Malinkov and
Kovpak’s forces moved deeper into the heart of the region, conducting periodic raids southward from the Olevs’k district. They captured (temporarily) the
German district commissar capital of Lel’chytsi and assassinated the German
SS and police district leader of Bragin.31 In the spring of , Kovpak commanded a total of , Soviet partisans operating in two groups along Zhytomyr’s northern border. Attacks on Germans, their facilities, and military transports had increased significantly; in one week, German commanders counted
twenty-nine clashes and thirteen attacks on major transport lines.32 German
SS and police commanders complained that because of inadequate forces and
matériel, and harsh weather conditions, they could not crush Kovpak’s units.33
Meanwhile, Stalin sent in additional Soviet forces southeast of Vinnytsia with
orders to drive northward to meet Kovpak’s units.34
The Moscow command had learned months earlier from one of their agents,
a Schutzmann named Mel’nichenko who had access to the SD office in Zhytomyr, that Himmler’s headquarters and vast SS and military installations were
located in the city’s vicinity at Hegewald. Already in the summer of , underground movements in Kiev and Vinnytsia radioed to Moscow that Hitler had
built a bunker near Vinnytsia as well as a ‘‘Prominente’’ POW camp, where
Andrei Vlasov and other Soviet commanders were being held. Soviet partisans
(renamed by Stalin as Red Army rear units) converged on this important Nazi
stronghold. Soviet intelligence operatives in the area attempted to assassinate
Hitler while he was based at the compound.35
But the Soviet partisans were not alone in their effort to destroy the Nazis
‘‘behind the lines.’’ While the Soviet partisans came to dominate the Zhytomyr region and also managed to infiltrate areas near the Hitler-Himmler headquarters, the anti-Soviet nationalist partisans operated in the more vulnerable
plains and forested patches found in the central districts and western borders
of Zhytomyr.36 The Mel’nykites in Vinnytsia and Banderites along the commissariat’s western border with Luts’k formed smaller mobile units (although
some reached battalion size) and waged a small-scale local campaign of sabotage and propaganda. They pursued their own campaigns to ‘‘purify’’ Ukraine
of its Russian, Jewish, and Polish elements.37
In the Zhytomyr region, another nationalist partisan group sprang up; it was
commanded by the son of Zhytomyr’s chief Ukrainian administrator, the young
Iatseniuk, who was a former Mel’nyk supporter and had fled the Germans in
the wake of the Bazar demonstration of November . Indeed, Iatseniuk led
the only independent nationalist partisan group to have emerged within the
 The Unraveling of Nazi Rule
borders of pre- Soviet Ukraine. Iatseniuk and his supporters in Zhytomyr waged an effective propaganda campaign against the Germans that spoke
directly to the local conditions and population.38 In May  the leaders of
the disparate Ukrainian nationalist partisan groups connected to Borovets,
Iatseniuk, and Bandera considered combining their groups under one single
command structure. But these negotiations broke down. They were resumed
only a few months later, when the Red forces under Kovpak penetrated western Ukraine and, along with Bandera’s forces, threatened the smaller nationalist factions. Borovets, Mel’nyk, and Iatseniuk had little choice but to join their
nationalist movements under the most militant and popular of the nationalist
leaders, Bandera.39
The merger of nationalist partisans under Bandera meant that a unified approach ultimately triumphed.40 However, this merger also represented a defeat for the moderate nationalist forces. As a native of the Zhytomyr region,
Iatseniuk carried out his underground campaign with a concern for the security and livelihood of the peasantry and townsfolk; Borovets also waged his attacks with the cooperation of the peasantry. The Banderites, however, like the
Red Army forces, often conducted their partisan campaign in ways that sacrificed the local population to the punitive measures of the Germans.
Relations between Zhytomyr’s Population and the Partisans
Before they could gain control over a community, both the Soviet and nationalist partisans found that they had to contend first with the German-appointed
village elders. One of their initial tasks was to determine whether the elder
could be a trusted sympathizer. Before  resistance fighters often moved
to another location if the elder was deemed unreliable, but during  they
simply did away with the unsupportive elder (and often killed or abused his wife
and children).41 Such murderous actions complied with official Soviet partisan
warfare policy.42 A former chief of the local Soviet partisan movement around
the city of Zhytomyr, Leontii Antonovich Kozaritskii, recalled:
We had many of our own leaders among the starosty, and they were not all
Ukrainians. In one case the ethnic German elder proved to be helpful and
for that the Germans killed him. His replacement, a Ukrainian, refused to
assist us and reported our whereabouts to the Germans, who then planned
a major air strike over the forest where we were encamped. So the partisan
commander put out a death warrant against the starosta who had moved
into a protected German headquarters. The partisans dressed as Ukrainian
The Unraveling of Nazi Rule

policemen, entered the headquarters, seized the starosta, and shot him in
the forest.43
Consistent with Kozaritskii’s account and several others found in the German documentation, Soviet partisans attacked uncooperative elders and Ukrainian or ethnic German policemen (and their families), whose mutilated bodies
were often later discovered in subsequent patrols of the forests.44
By June  resistance forces controlled about  percent of the region’s
cultivated land.They killed , German officials and administrators and their
Ukrainian and ethnic German allies.45 The commissars panicked, barricading
themselves into their offices and homes. They turned to the SS-police for protection and underwent their own police-led defensive training course against
partisan attacks. Some went on the defensive; others, the offensive. As Koch
observed, commissars engaged in partisan warfare beyond their districts, out
of ‘‘Abenteuerlust’’ (lust for adventure). In a joint SS-commissar reprisal action
on  March, the village of Kazymirivka (district Mazyr) was destroyed, and
 inhabitants were murdered;  of them were women and children.46 The
district commissar in Retchiza, Dr. Paul Blümel, assisted the SS-police forces
(including an SS cavalry division) in carrying out Operation ‘‘Weichsel.’’ Prior
to the operation, Blümel determined who within the population of the designated ‘‘dead zone’’ would be killed and who would be spared. They killed ,
persons, deported at least , as forced laborers, and razed  villages.47
Leyser, whom Himmler later censured as someone who ‘‘understood nothing of the partisan warfare,’’ was so frustrated by his inability to govern and
exploit his region’s riches that he sent a scathing report to Berlin in June .
In it he wrote about the social and political backlashes of German antipartisan warfare. Excessive SS and police raids on villages created homelessness
and lack of productivity, a welfare and economic burden on the commissariat
that also ended up alienating the entire Ukrainian population. He explained
that the loss of Germans in the guerrilla warfare resulted from a broken, corrupt Nazi system. A few months prior to Leyser’s report, Koch admonished the
commissars for taking up arms against the partisans, ordering them to stay
at their desks and write up reports about the attacks. Accordingly, Leyser submitted his June report to Berlin (through Koch’s office in Rivne). His critique
shocked some Nazi leaders, including Himmler, because besides detailing the
failings of the Nazi system, Leyser complained about the self-seeking power
struggles between Wehrmacht and SS-police officials who competed over antipartisan operations. Leyser too sought unsuccessfully to control antipartisan
policies in his region, but he saw the ‘‘problem’’ as essentially a political one,

The Unraveling of Nazi Rule
not strictly a military, strategic one. In many ways Leyser articulated the general skepticism and disillusionment that began to permeate the empire’s eastern outpost in the summer of .48
As the tension mounted in the German commissariat offices over the partisan warfare that disrupted everyday life, rifts developed among the German
personnel. Shortages of resources and manpower became especially acute, and
cooperation began to break down. The district commissars across Zhytomyr
reported to Leyser that, given the fact that many of their colleagues had already
been drafted, it seemed unfair that so many private German business entrepreneurs were still around in great numbers doing useless work. The commissars
branded them draft dodgers. Leyser responded by asking the local commissars
to investigate the activities of the private German businessmen and report anybody who could be placed in more war-related work.49
The commissars who had initially arrived in the region with an arrogant attitude of superiority found that much of their power over the countryside hinged
on the loyalty of the very ‘‘colonial subjects’’ whom they terrorized. This instability was recognized at all levels of the German hierarchy. In the summer
of , Hitler and General Wilhelm Keitel announced a program that would
reward any ‘‘eastern peoples’’ for acts of bravery in support of the Germans,
particularly in the ‘‘fight against enemies of the Reich.’’ 50 Shortly after this program was introduced, the Reich Commissariat’s Abteilung für Ernährung und
Landwirtschaft (Department of Nutrition and Agricultural Economy) sent to
Zhytomyr , liters of vodka, , kilograms of tobacco, and  tons of
sugar, to be distributed as bribes to indigenous supporters of the Reich. The
local German police also offered certificates for up to two hectares of land (including former Jewish property) to those civilians who assisted in denouncing
or fighting partisans.51 Ukrainian police were given fifty German Reichsmarks
for every ‘‘bandit’’ whom they captured or killed.52 When the Germans bribed
Ukrainian auxiliaries, the Schutzmänner snatched up the German goods (butter, meat, and bread) and demanded more. When Ukrainian auxiliary policemen abandoned the Germans and joined the partisan movements, they brought
the goods with them to the forests.53 Many farmers did not need the German
bribes anyway because they secretly slaughtered their livestock; in  German commissars in the Zhytomyr region reported that , pigs and ,
cattle were missing, and people stopped bringing their produce to the marketplace. In short the Germans were unable to manage the local economy and extract material resources from Ukraine to the extent that they had predicted in
.54
In early  local German commissars and gendarme leaders were asked
The Unraveling of Nazi Rule

to nominate indigenous auxiliaries and administrators for commendation, because thus far the Germans had not identified a significant number of outstanding acts of bravery committed by civilians in support of the Germans.55 In
Monastryshche the Germans were pleasantly surprised by a village elder who
fought aggressively against the Soviets and, with a bit of local support, was
able to capture and kill some partisans. The Germans left behind few reports
about the distribution of rewards to civilians, or the recognition of civilians
who assisted the Germans. While Ukrainians seeking to conceal their collaborative role from Soviet authorities may have destroyed these records, this gap in
the documentation may also indicate that there were few locals whom the Germans deemed worthy of recognition, and, therefore, few who remained loyal
to the Germans throughout the occupation.
Dissension within Ukrainian communities was rife. German policy pitted
Ukrainians against one another, and members of the Ukrainian police (the
most detested of all) abused their power to no end. In Koziatyn, for example,
the Ukrainian mayor observed that a Ukrainian Schutzmann who was not at his
designated post was stealing from the locals and amusing himself by shooting
wildly at stray animals. The mayor approached the policeman and threatened
to report him to the Germans for his wild conduct. The policeman clubbed the
mayor to death. In the town of Nepedivka, a gang of drunken Ukrainian policemen started to beat up the village elder. This incensed several of the locals,
who decided to take action. Fifteen Ukrainians ran to the nearest German authority, the agricultural leader, and with his help, they rescued the elder and
apprehended the drunken Ukrainian police.56
Women and the Partisan Movement
Maria Atamanskaia and Maria Kondratenko
In the end, the partisan warfare struck hardest at the local population of
mainly women, the youth, and the elderly. They became the pawns in the NaziSoviet and local nationalist movements’ struggles over Ukraine. Women and
children who were drawn into Zhytomyr’s resistance movements (forcibly or
willingly) provided food and shelter for underground agents, as well as information about the region, the Germans, or other rival partisan factions. In
the eyes of the Germans, the local’s role, whether central or peripheral to any
movement, was cause for severe punishment if not death. Often people were
tragically in the wrong place, at the wrong time. For example, in March 
the sixteen-year-old collective farmer Maria Atamanskaia was going about her
work when Soviet partisans approached her and asked for directions to the
 The Unraveling of Nazi Rule
house of the village elder. The partisans also demanded food from the collective farm, at which point, Maria recalled, many female peasants wept for there
was not enough food to feed the partisans, the Germans, and, most important,
their own families. This brief exchange with the partisans came to the attention
of the Germans. Atamanskaia was seized by Ukrainian police and brought to
German police headquarters in Zhytomyr. There Ukrainian and German police
interrogated her and tried to force her to sign a confession of partisan membership or support. But Atamanskaia refused, so they beat her until she was
unconscious. When she awoke in her cell, a day had passed. Ukrainian police
told her that she would be released, but Atamanskaia was kept in the cell for
another week while arrangements were made for her deportation to the Reich.
She was placed in a sealed freight car and sent to Germany as a forced laborer.57
Family members—usually wives, daughters, and mothers of suspected partisans—were always the first targets of German police investigations into the
movement.58 The gendarme captaincy in Mazyr had ordered in the late summer of  that if the family members of partisans were connected with the
movement, then they, too, should be killed.59 In August  the Ukrainian
district leader of Bazar issued an order similar to one that was signed by the
Gestapo of Zhytomyr: if a member of a community helped a partisan in any
way, then all of the members of the community were to be killed; if a villager
did not report the presence of partisans in or near the village, then the entire
village would be razed.60
In an atmosphere of insecurity and paranoia, Nazi regional leaders suspected everyone of partisan activity, killed ‘‘resisters’’ en masse, and aimed
punitive measures against family members of suspects, thereby destroying the
Germans’ remaining ties to villages and communities. Local SS-policemen
killed an ethnic German woman named Frau Wegerer in the town of Mar’ianivka; she was executed for supplying partisans with food. On the morning of
 September , a thirteen-year-old girl named Hania was standing guard
over the harvest. She was hungry and secretly pocketed some of the produce.
When a member of the Koziatyn SS-police office approached her, she became
frightened and ran. The policeman shot her dead.61 In September  German gendarmes in Koziatyn went from village to village under orders to kill the
wives and family members of Ukrainian auxiliary policemen who had deserted
their posts and presumably fled to the partisans. The Soviet partisans had been
practicing the same policy against Ukrainian collaborators for over a year.62
In what ways did the local population—in particular, women—become involved in the resistance? In addition to supporting the Soviet and nationalist
partisan movements by offering shelter and food, women in Zhytomyr served
The Unraveling of Nazi Rule

as couriers and sabotaged the German administration and economy by secretly
slaughtering livestock, hiding food, stealing supplies, and planting explosives.
A few murdered German officials by poisoning their food. German commanders had warned early on that women should be deemed as suspect as men, perhaps trying to counter the prevailing gender stereotype that women were ‘‘intellectually limited, emotional, submissive.’’ 63 The prominent role of a female
partisan leader in Korosten’ named Maria Kondratenko alarmed Nazi leaders
and challenged their gendered prejudices about women’s capabilities. Since
Kondratenko successfully eluded the Germans, they investigated and hunted
her with a determination (and frustration) unmatched in other cases against
local partisans.64
Sometime in  or early , Kondratenko (who was from Iagniatyn)
joined the commissar’s office in Koziatyn. Before the war, she was employed
as a truck driver; therefore, she had a good geographic sense of the roadways
and routes in the region. But under the Germans she worked as a translator and
also contributed an article to the local Ukrainian (German-censored) newspaper in April . In July , about a year after she joined the commissar’s
office, German police carried out extensive interrogations of Kondratenko’s
contacts and friends in Koziatyn. They also circulated a photograph of her,
which showed that she had a small child.
The German police search for Kondratenko began after one night in midMay  when she tapped on the window of her friend Anna Tkachova. She
told Tkachova that she was going to hide out in the forests near Ruzhyn, and
that she was seeking to ‘‘bring into line the guys from the railway.’’ Her task was
to persuade the Ukrainian railway guards to help with the planned sabotage of
the rail lines. The next day these Ukrainian Schutzmänner fled with Kondratenko to the forest, where they encamped by the forester’s house near Ruzhyn.
Meanwhile, Tkachova obtained forged travel documents and went by horsedrawn cart to the Ruzhyn marketplace; during her return trip, she stopped by
the forest hideout to bring soap, matches, and other items. Tkachova continued
to work as a cleaning woman in the Ukrainian courthouse while she secretly
brought letters and supplies to the forest hideout. After about two months, at
the end of July, the Germans captured Tkachova and interrogated her about
Kondratenko and the resistance group. When the German interrogators were
finished with Tkachova, the SS and police leaders handed her over to the SD in
Berdychiv. She was executed on  July .65
Besides Tkachova, the Germans arrested and questioned Kondratenko’s
friends, neighbors, and landlord. They learned exactly where Kondratenko’s

The Unraveling of Nazi Rule
group was hiding and planned a ‘‘cleansing’’ operation of the forest near Iagniatyn. On the morning of  August, twelve German SS and policemen, ninetyone Ukrainian auxiliaries, and sixty Hungarian soldiers raided the camp. They
identified one woman among the twelve ‘‘bandits,’’ but she escaped during the
skirmish; and they managed to capture and kill the commander of the group,
a Jewish man known as Black Misha, as well as Kondratenko’s lover, Fedoruk.66 Two days after the raid, on  August, one of the German police chiefs
in Koziatyn, Josef Richter, the station leader at Samhorodok who led numerous anti-Jewish and antipartisan manhunts in , was assassinated when his
truck was stopped on the road near Iagniatyn.67 Kondratenko successfully hid
from her German pursuers. However, her friends who had been arrested, interrogated, and later executed told the German police that she had been deported to the Reich as a laborer.68
The Kondratenko case illustrates that women did join the partisans in the
woods, where they carried out a number of important, dangerous tasks. But
Kondratenko represented a small number of women who held leading roles in
the resistance movement. The majority of women in Zhytomyr labored under
the eye of German and Ukrainian overseers, while they were increasingly expected to respond to partisan demands in their villages and homes. When they
were not working the fields during the spring, summer, and fall, they were assigned by the Germans to heavy labor projects, such as digging trenches and
clearing roads of rubble, ice, and snow. In the cities and towns, they were employed as maids, factory workers and, more numerously, Putzfrauen (cleaning
women). They also tried to hold together what remained of their households by
concealing their children from forced labor raids and hiding food from the Germans to feed their families. When German or Soviet forces razed their houses,
they built shelters in the holes that were once their homes.69 Whenever possible, they tended the small plots around their houses.
Thus there are important social, indeed gendered dimensions to the history
of factious partisan warfare that struck nearly all of the households of Zhytomyr’s northern districts, and in pockets of the central and southern districts
around Vinnytsia. By  nearly all Ukrainians, male and female, were united
in their anti-German sentiment and desire to remove the Nazis from Ukrainian soil. However, the wartime presence of a number of resistance groups—
above all the Ukrainian nationalists and the Soviet detachments—also reveals
that beneath this common immediate desire to expel the Nazis persisted a
society fractured along ethnic, political, ideological, religious, and gendered
lines.
The Unraveling of Nazi Rule

German Atrocity Propaganda
A Ukrainian ‘‘Katyn’’ at Vinnytsia
If the commissar’s role in the  period of ‘‘total war’’ was not to impersonate the police by carrying out heightened ‘‘security measures,’’ it was to
champion a new Nazi propaganda campaign that, paradoxically, emphasized
the crimes of Stalinism. The goal was to induce Ukrainians to fight against the
Red Army and the partisans. In the commissariat apparatus, a new main department was formed for propaganda, which had previously fallen under the department of politics. General Commissar Leyser wrote to the commissars that
the immediate objective of  was to use more propaganda in the ‘‘service of
the German administration and war in the East’’ because ‘‘we must convince
Ukrainians that only the Germans will allow free religion and protect people
from hunger and Soviet crimes.’’ The new Nazi propaganda effort should, in
Leyser’s words, ‘‘stress Soviet crimes.’’ 70
At the end of March , Leyser required the commissars to collect and
submit to him all photos, testimonies, and documents that revealed the horrors of Bolshevism. He also asked the commissars to publicize in the Ukrainian
newspapers a contest for the best essays titled ‘‘What Do We Have to Thank the
Germans For?’’ and ‘‘Never Again Bolshevism!’’ Leyser dictated which themes
the Ukrainians should write about: ‘‘the generous and modern administration
of the Germans; a fair justice system; decree on the privatization of agriculture;
the expansion of farm plots; employment possibilities; religious tolerance and
cultural freedom.’’ As a grand prize in this contest, the Germans offered a trip
through the Reich of ten to fourteen days, which given the increasing presence
of the Soviets may have seemed especially attractive to some Ukrainians.71
The Nazis’ biggest propaganda event in Zhytomyr was the unearthing of
mass graves at Vinnytsia containing , victims of Stalin’s  purges.
Ukrainian leaders had told the Germans earlier about the location of these
mass graves, but the Germans chose to exploit the Vinnytsia tragedy in July
, after the Katyn massacres were revealed (which Goebbels hailed as a propaganda success). Religious leaders and forensic experts from Nazi-occupied
Europe arrived in Vinnytsia, as part of what the Nazis touted was an international investigation. One of the experts on the scene was the former Sixth Army
doctor Gerhart Panning who had conducted gruesome experiments on Jewish
POWs during August . City Commissar Fritz Margenfeld questioned Ukrainian administrators in his office about who in Vinnytsia might have been an
NKVD official in  and could be blamed publicly in a Nazi show trial.72
The Ukrainian Autocephalous Church supported the entire Nazi campaign,
 The Unraveling of Nazi Rule
especially its anti-Semitic content. During one of the funeral processions, the
Autocephalous bishop Hryhorii told the mourners that the Jews had tortured
and killed the victims of the  massacres. Then he lashed out further: ‘‘Well
then, my dear ones, rise up at once and, like Christ, ask the bloodswollen
torturer, ‘the father of all workers,’ Stalin, for which of the good deeds that
we have done for you and your Jews throughout our lives, you torture us so
much? Maybe for our hard labor in the kolkhoz fields, where we worked without straightening our backs, growing high wheat, so that your Jews would have
a tasty roll for shabbas and Passover? Or maybe for filling our eyes with sweat as
we worked on sugar beats [sic] so that your kikes would have sweet things?’’ 73
The unearthing of the Vinnytsia site in the summer of  was depicted in a
series of propaganda posters that showed an anti-Semitic Jewish figure towering over the mass graves. Thus even after the Germans had killed nearly every
Jewish person in the region, they continued to effectively exploit their antiSemitic aims as a popular mobilizing force against Bolshevism. As historian
Amir Weiner’s work has shown, after almost three years of Nazi anti-Semitic
practices and propaganda, few flinched at or even questioned such grotesque
and vitriolic distortions. Indeed, during the war the Nazis reignited smoldering
ethnic animosities and introduced new forms of anti-Semitism in Zhytomyr
(and the rest of Europe). Meanwhile, within local German circles the commissars and their deputies continued to disparage Ukrainians as ‘‘white Negroes’’
and ‘‘colonial peoples,’’ showing that their propaganda appeals to Ukrainians
as victims of Stalinist crimes were certainly not inspired by a sudden and sincere
empathy for the local population of non-Germans.74 It was purely a short-term
tactic done out of desperation as the Germans tried to maintain power over
the region. The Nazi reward program and propaganda efforts failed. It was too
little, too late. Moreover, Ukrainians who were caught in the middle of the NaziSoviet war naturally threw in their lot with the perceived winner. After Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad in early  and the unsuccessful German offensive in the summer of , siding with the Soviets seemed to be the safer bet.
The Collapse of Nazi Colonization Experiments
Hegewald under Attack
The  military setbacks on the Eastern Front compelled Nazi leaders to
reduce Volksdeutsche programs to regional initiatives, and then to abandon
them altogether.75 Local leaders continued to fulfill the plans made in the fall
of , resettling more Volksdeutsche in Hegewald and in another settlement
at Cherniakhiv (named ‘‘Försterstadt’’) in early . But by April  General
The Unraveling of Nazi Rule

Image rights unavailable
Vinnitsa. Vinnytsia, . A Nazi anti-Semitic poster claiming that the source of Soviet terror was
the ‘‘Jewish-Bolshevik’’ commissar. The Ukrainian women in the poster are viewing victims of the
– purges exhumed in Vinnytsia in July . The illustration was obtained with the help of
Dr. Amir Weiner, Stanford University. (Vinnitsa. GE . Hoover Institution Archives)
Commissar Leyser declared that all resettlement actions were to be postponed,
and only in the severe cases of life-threatening conditions, especially partisan
attack, should ethnic Germans be resettled.76 Later, on  July , Himmler’s
Generalplan Ost was abruptly shelved when Hitler ordered a halt to ethnic German resettlement and land ‘‘grants’’ until after the war.77
Although Hitler demanded that large-scale colonization schemes cease, local efforts to ‘‘educate’’ Volksdeutsche and to bestow on them a higher German status continued until the final days of the Nazi evacuation. These efforts
were ultimately cut short by the war, but even before the Red Army returned
to Zhytomyr in November , other local factors were sabotaging Hitler’s
Lebensraum goals. As much as local officials spoke of ‘‘protecting’’ the ethnic
Germans who had been classified and resettled, the population was in fact subjected to Nazi brutality and the circumstances of war. The SS and the Party’s
NSV transplanted thousands of ethnic Germans by force, and often under
harsh conditions. After the Volksdeutsche arrived in their new settlements, the
Nazis failed to provide the types of privileges propagandized in earlier decrees
and policy plans. German leaders of the various agencies posted in the region
lacked adequate resources and manpower to care for this dislocated population.
Hegewald’s Volksdeutsche received the most attention, but many ethnic
Germans remained outside the settlement. They were scattered across Ukrainian villages in the northern districts where they fell victim to the brutal NaziSoviet partisan warfare. To protect these vulnerable Volksdeutsche, the RuSHA
regional chief in charge of special resettlement actions, Theo Henschel, and
members of the German People’s List began a rapid campaign to classify and
resettle over , ethnic Germans around Hegewald.78 They formed a second
colony in the Zhytomyr region named Försterstadt (‘‘game-keeper’s town’’).79
During this hasty resettlement action, Himmler’s subordinates followed his
lead by kidnapping ‘‘racially valuable’’ children from Ukrainian homes (a crime
that Himmler promoted in his Hegewald speech of September ). In the
aftermath of the last SS sweep of Volksdeutsche villages in Zhytomyr’s northern districts, the number of orphans under SS-VoMi care in Zhytomyr increased
by nearly  children.80
Himmler’s functionaries rushed to expand their local support base among
the Volksdeutsche population, so much so that the local chief of the Sonderkommando Russland outpost in Zhytomyr, SS-Sturmbannführer Richard
Schill, was fired in July  for the unauthorized enrollment of ethnic German settlers.81 Hundreds of local Ukrainians and Poles tricked the Nazi racial
examiners by falsely claiming German blood in order to secure better rations,
The Unraveling of Nazi Rule

better jobs, and possible escape from the advancing Soviets. The SS-police,
the Party, and Rosenberg’s commissariat offices were unable to manage this
growing population of ethnic Germans. In the city of Zhytomyr, where Sonderkommando a first registered  ethnic Germans in late August , the
population reached several thousand by summer . City Commissar Fritz
Magass had nominal control over them since they resided in the city, but the
leading offices governing ethnic German programs were also headquartered
there. Given the high-profile presence of leading SS-police and Party organizations, the Volksdeutsche there should have enjoyed the maximum level of
German privileges that the Nazis promoted. However, in the summer of ,
an official of General Commissar Leyser’s office observed that the ethnic Germans in the city still lived in very primitive houses and were unable to obtain
food. At one shop that was supposed to serve , Volksdeutsche, the ethnic Germans stood in line all day and crowded inside where a single clerk tried
to stock the shelves and sell the goods. At the shop counter, ethnic Germans
fought over produce, and rations could not be distributed; one family had been
eating only peas for dinner, while another received only milk. The entire program, this official wrote, is ‘‘eine Schweinerei’’ (an awful mess).82
Meanwhile, Nazi thugs who conducted forced labor raids throughout the region began to strike the Volksdeutsche settlements. Ethnic Germans were supposed to be exempt from labor deportations to the Reich, but Nazi leaders like
Erich Koch and Fritz Sauckel placed enormous pressure on local authorities
to round up as many people as possible. Even at the prized Hegewald settlement, SS leader Henschel complained in one report that ‘‘wild’’ labor recruiters
snatched ethnic Germans, forced them onto trucks, and placed them in the reception camps. When General Commissar Leyser later reprimanded the labor
recruiters, he explained that ‘‘a strengthening of the German peoples, which
was the goal of resettlement, will not be possible if the [ethnic German] labor
force is deported.’’ 83
From the perspective of the Soviet partisan movement, the ethnic Germans’
‘‘racial’’ status placed them in the enemy camp of Nazi fascists and ‘‘collaborators.’’ Soviet attacks against Volksdeutsche settlements and households, which
began in , increased considerably during . It was no secret to the
local Ukrainian population that SS-army storehouses kept ample supplies of
food and equipment for the Reich Germans in Zhytomyr. In May  partisans raided Hegewald’s special SS shops and stole vehicles and goods. Outside
Hegewald—for example, in Mazyr—partisans massacred ethnic German families. Across the northern part of Zhytomyr, partisans continually ransacked
ethnic German farms for livestock and produce. The SS-police carried out re The Unraveling of Nazi Rule
prisal measures for such attacks; and when units of the ethnic German Selbstschutz were in place, they took revenge on neighboring Ukrainian villages.84
Meanwhile, south of Hegewald near Vinnytsia, Hitler visited his Werwolf compound for the last time on  August  for a meeting with General Erich von
Manstein. One month later, his security forces at the compound reported over
, acts of resistance in and around the site, resulting in the arrests of 
persons. Among the partisans who were arrested and killed were a few Jews
from the Vinnytsia region.85
The atrocities that accompanied the Nazi retreat have been largely overlooked in military studies of the war. In addition to the enormous suffering and
loss of life, the violence had other psychological and political consequences.
By further demoralizing Zhytomyr’s inhabitants—many of whom were bereft
by the loss of loved ones in the partisan warfare or were left homeless—the
strongest of the movements, the Soviet insurgency, was able to effectively stifle
any Ukrainian resistance to a Stalinist reoccupation of Zhytomyr. Instead,
Ukrainians developed a new patriotic attachment to the victorious Red Army,
a source of unity that Stalin among others effectively exploited in the postwar
period.
The Unraveling of Nazi Rule

Chapter 9 Legacies of Nazi Rule
Shortly before the Red Army entered Zhytomyr at the end of
November, the Nazis hastily implemented an evacuation plan. In the city prison
of Berdychiv, the prisoners were gathered in the courtyard and shot; others
were thrown into wells. One of the few Jewish survivors of Berdychiv, Khaim
Borisovich, described the German evacuation as he experienced it:
When the Red Army first liberated Zhitomir, the Germans in Berdichev began to panic. At this point I was able to escape. I hid in various places looking
for shelter in cellars and half-ruined houses. I was able to remain in hiding
until  January . On this day, feeling their evacuation was close at hand,
the Germans started rounding up citizens, indiscriminately sending people
to Germany. I snuck into an empty house right next to the SD, trusting that
no one would search this place. . . . During the night of  January, I climbed
up to the attic of the abandoned building. With the Red Army nearby, the
Germans quickly tried to do away with all of the prisoners. On the morning of  January, I could see and hear the shooting of the prisoners in the
SD courtyard from my attic hiding place. They were taken out in groups of
– people; their hands were tied behind their backs. About  prisoners
who were shot on that day were also buried in the pit of the SD yard. That
same night all of the SD men and soldiers fled. Some of the prisoners were
buried alive since the Germans were in such a hurry to leave. The next day,
 January , Soviet troops entered Berdychiv.1
Even in the final hours of their rule, German officials continued to hunt for
every last Jew; some feared that Jewish survivors would take revenge on their
tormentors. Others seemed to have an insatiable appetite for blood and violence that even the Reich’s imminent defeat did not diminish. Ukrainians who
tried to help the prisoners, including the few remaining Jews, were also shot.2
The commissars and the SS and police destroyed top-secret documents. They
loaded up trains, trucks, cars, and horse carts with their most prized plunder.
Along with the livestock from Hegewald, the ethnic Germans were formed into
columns and forced to march westward toward the German-Polish border.
Himmler had waited until the last possible minute to evacuate the ethnic
Germans from Zhytomyr, and thus he forced many Volksdeutsche to serve in
defensive military operations.3 On  November , the day after General
Commissar Leyser fled the city of Zhytomyr, the ethnic Germans departed in
four ‘‘treks.’’ One of the columns of ethnic Germans, numbering  persons
(mainly women and children), was massacred by Soviet forces on – November.4 To make matters worse, the ethnic German Selbstschutz and Ukrainian
auxiliaries who were supposed to act as ‘‘security escorts’’ for the Volksdeutsche
treks were (as one SS official put it) ‘‘lacking in leadership’’ and prone to ‘‘plundering and other offensive excesses.’’ 5 By  November, streams of ethnic German refugees were arriving by foot and wagon in the Polish Warthegau, where
they remained in camps run by VoMi.6 According to historian Doris Bergen’s
research, the mostly ill, starving, and terrorized Volksdeutsche who arrived in
these camps were ‘‘crammed into school buildings, guarded by police, and in
some cases turned away from local hospitals.’’ Once the pride and joy of Nazi
colonial enthusiasts, now they ‘‘embodied the failure of the Nazi empire, both
inside and outside the Reich.’’ 7 For the ethnic German refugees, the Nazi defeat
marked the onset of a new phase of Soviet persecution. When the Red Army uncovered these camps in January  during its advance on Berlin, they rounded
up the ethnic Germans, shoved them into sealed freight cars, and sent them to
the trans-Ural region. Those who did not die on the journey were forced into
‘‘special settlements’’ for Germans.8
Months before the Red Army first pushed the Germans temporarily out of
Zhytomyr on  November , Ukrainians prepared themselves for the return of Soviet power. They started to secretly collect rubles and devise alibis
that would hold up under Soviet interrogations. Many began to stockpile their
own arms by trading foodstuffs for weapons with the retreating Wehrmacht
soldiers who trudged through the region, emaciated and defeatist. The Red
Army liberated the city of Zhytomyr on New Year’s Eve,  December , and
Vinnytsia on  March .9 Yet for most the euphoria of liberation was shortlived. All men in the region between the ages of seventeen and fifty were immediately drafted into the Red Army. Soviet secret police and intelligence units
(NKVD and SMERSH) began to round up and shoot collaborators; collective
farms were stripped of any remaining foodstuffs. In some cases the Soviets,
upon overrunning former labor camps, branded the workers as traitors, and
then brutally killed them with their tanks and grenades.
While nearly all Germans feared Soviet retribution and fled westward, the
electrician Ivan Shynal’skii, who worked for German officials in Zhytomyr’s
commissariat office, remembered one contrary example from the final days of
the war in the city. One of his German superiors was deeply involved with a
Ukrainian woman and fathered more than one child with her. He also supLegacies of Nazi Rule

German soldiers during the reconquest of Zhytomyr, December  (Ullstein Bild #)
ported the local Ukrainian underground. When the Germans evacuated Zhytomyr, this commissar decided to stay. Red Army intelligence arrested him. He
pleaded with them that he was a Communist sympathizer, but he was shot on
the spot anyway.10
From the perspective of Zhytomyr’s Ukrainians, the continuities between
Nazi and Soviet occupation were striking. As had been the case under Stalin’s
totalitarian rule, Ukrainians under the Nazis were the objects of a revolutionary reordering of society forged through violence. They often compared the two
regimes. For example, when the Nazis shut down a local Orthodox church in
Zhytomyr and then crammed hundreds of Jewish laborers inside it, Ukrainian
peasants remarked that the Germans used Bolshevik methods. Ukrainians also
frequently complained that German labor raids were like Stalin’s mass deportations in the s.
However, what the Nazis attempted to achieve in the region and how they
implemented their imperialistic, criminal policies represented a dramatically
different episode in Ukraine’s history, unlike the Stalinist campaigns of the
s and the subsequent, relatively relaxed Soviet policies of the postwar period. The Germans introduced familiar colonial forms of rule as well as initiated revolutionary racial programs that were genocidal. The first step, as the
Nazis saw it, in fulfilling their utopian plans for the East was the destruction
of the Jews. This was a policy goal that had been made clear to senior offi Legacies of Nazi Rule
The Collapse of the
Nazi Empire: The Forced
Evacuation of Volksdeutsche
from Ukraine, . The
arrows show the paths or
‘‘treks’’ of ethnic Germans
who went (mainly in horsedrawn wagons and on foot)
to Nazi-occupied Poland and
the Reich. The squares on the
map represent the Volksdeutsche colonies and the
reception areas or camps
where the evacuees stopped
along the way or ended their
journey. Source: U.S.
National Archives and
Records Administration,
T-//.
cials in the military, SS and police, and civil administration shortly before they
arrived in the region. Given the secret and criminal nature of the ‘‘Final Solution,’’ however, not all levels of the local hierarchy were made aware of their
expected role as perpetrators. While stationed in Zhytomyr, some of the rank
and file in the military and even members of the SS-police in the SD special
(killing) task forces began to realize the magnitude of this criminal undertaking, but any trepidations that surfaced at the lower levels were suppressed by
the reassurances and ‘‘explanations’’ of superior commanders. No other group
within the indigenous population was pursued and destroyed in such a systematic, thoroughgoing manner, and with such widespread participation of Germans and non-Germans.
By contrast, when regional leaders approached the more vaguely defined
project of ‘‘Germanization,’’ they proved to be less capable of realizing the
elite’s intentions. The history and outcome of the ethnic German programs
in Zhytomyr demonstrate that the structures of Nazi power in the field functioned differently depending on the policy. In other words, at the lower levels
a typical German official understood how to ‘‘deal with the Jews’’ and was generally willing to do what was expected of him. The ethnic German policy, on
the other hand, did not generate the same kind of consensus; it stimulated, instead, improvisation and chaos.
Hitler was well aware that his empire could not be secured though military
conquest alone. The Germans had a brief history of imperialism and therefore needed to be taught how to administer and exploit conquered territories
as colonial possessions. Nazi leaders, foremost among them Himmler, cherished the Eastern Territories as a laboratory to let loose revolutionary völkisch
experiments and agrarian colonial fantasies. Short-lived and ultimately a failure, Himmler’s Hegewald experiment manifested these irrational, utopian elements of Nazi empire-building. The tragic paradoxes and delusions of the entire Nazi endeavor are particularly evident in the words of the local SS-police
trainer in Berdychiv. He celebrated the genocidal destruction of the Jews while
touting the ‘‘New Eastern Europe’’ under the Nazis as a historic continuation
of the migration of Germanic colonists ‘‘who penetrated Eastern European
countries over the course of centuries . . . [who] did not bring robbery and destruction, fire and murder, death and ruin; instead, they successfully created
from the fertile fields blooming cities, outstanding buildings, and artistic [and]
scholarly works of the highest value.’’ 11 This ironic statement was supposed
to convince young Ukrainian and ethnic German policemen, who were mainly
conscripts, that German colonialism was civilized and historically legitimate.
The Ukrainian, ethnic German, Jewish, and Polish responses to German
 Legacies of Nazi Rule
rule were not uniform, primarily because Ukraine was a country that had a
long history of foreign rule and regional particularisms. No discernible political impulses were expressed by a majority. Instead, most Ukrainians embraced
efforts to revive the school system and religious institutions; they clamored for
the privatization of the collective farms. Still recovering from the horrors of
Stalinism, they earnestly hoped for a ‘‘New Way of Life’’ (as promised by the
Germans), one that would genuinely benefit Ukrainians.12 Although the Germans made overtures along these lines to the Ukrainians, their propaganda
promises never bore fruit.
The Germans found an ample number of Ukrainians to serve in the RKU administration. But in contrast to the Nazi occupation of most Western European
countries, the Germans did not conquer a Ukrainian government, and this fact
made it all the easier for many Ukrainians to join the German administration
without feeling as if they were national traitors. Ukrainian nationalists who
joined the Nazi administration perceived the defeat of the Soviets as an opportunity to establish an independent Ukraine under German protection. But the
most common motivation of the local Ukrainian leader was a desire for power
and material improvements, often to the great disadvantage of his neighbor.
Ukrainians who took on leading roles in the German administration believed
that there was something to be gained, at least in the short term, by cooperating with the Germans.13
The revival of Orthodox Christianity, although it too was rife with factionalism, provided a significant demonstration of the power of religion as a coping
mechanism for Ukrainians. When faced with total terror, grief, and deprivation, Ukrainians searched for explanations for their plight and sought a spiritual haven from the horror of everyday life.Yet even the shared hatred of Nazism
neither united Ukrainians under the banner of nationalism nor instilled a renewed faith in Soviet-style communism. In fact, the destructive years of the
Nazi occupation created more ambivalence toward the nationalists and left
Ukrainians more vulnerable to Soviet reoccupation; the Nazis actually seeded
new antagonisms and strengthened old rivalries. Polish-Ukrainian and JewishUkrainian relations sank to the worst levels of violence, spiraling into civil
wars, first behind the lines in the occupied territory and then within the maelstrom of the Nazi-Soviet military conflict as it moved westward.
Ukrainians suffered tremendous losses under the Nazis. Having made terrible sacrifices during the s to facilitate the buildup of the collective farms
and the region’s industry, they now saw all of that effort gone to waste. The
material devastation was enormous, but it paled next to the death toll and the
immeasurable grief and trauma that struck all survivors of the Nazi occupation.
Legacies of Nazi Rule

Virtually everyone had witnessed the brutalization of friends, family members,
and neighbors. With a single, fatal stroke, the Germans and their accomplices
erased centuries of Jewish life and cultural achievement. Forced evacuations
and migrations of ethnic Germans also resulted in the near disappearance of
that minority in Ukraine. According to Soviet postwar investigators and forensic reports, in the Zhytomyr and Vinnytsia oblasts a total of , persons
died during the war; more than half were civilians, and the rest were prisoners
of war.14 Unlike other foreign rulers who had occupied the region, the Germans left nothing of any social or economic value. To Soviet leaders, however,
the Nazis bequeathed much more.
Even before the Red Army reoccupied Zhytomyr, Soviet partisan leaders and
intelligence officials took note of the behavior and loyalties of people living
under German rule. They exacted their greatest revenge on the nationalists and
collaborators in the wartime administration. But everyone in postwar Ukraine
was subjected to a new kind of ‘‘cleansing’’ of Soviet society. As historian Amir
Weiner found in his study of the war’s impact on Vinnytsia, ‘‘Wartime conduct
emerged as the key criterion in the evaluation of ‘party worthiness.’ Subjected
to [Soviet-style inquisitors demanding to know] ‘Where were you during the
German occupation, and how did you survive?’ (which often implied ‘Why did
you survive?’), thousands of Communists saw their careers and beliefs assessed
through the prism of the new legitimizing myth of the war.’’ 15
For many, the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazism validated the communist
experiment and even heralded a new era in the socialist revolution. At the heart
of the new patriotic myth of the war was the claim that all ‘‘peaceful Soviet
citizens’’ were united in the struggle against fascism and all Soviet nationalities suffered equally under the Nazis. Though ethnic Germans and Poles from
the Zhytomyr region had been deported by the thousands in successive waves
between  and , it was the war that cemented a Soviet policy of fullscale ethnic cleansing and homogenization. The strength and stability of the
Soviet Union and the socialist experiment now depended on republics that contained large ethnic majorities rather than aggregations of potentially disloyal
ethnic minorities. The purification of Soviet society meant that all of the enemies from within—namely, collaborators and Ukrainian nationalists—were
exposed, often killed outright, or deported. The Holocaust was universalized,
since no ethnic group was to be given a special status as the victim of Nazism.
The war allowed Stalin to push his crimes into the background while Hitler’s
took center stage.
The Holocaust became prominent not as the source of empathy toward the
Jews but just its opposite. Nazi anti-Semitic practices and propaganda con Legacies of Nazi Rule
tinued to resonate among Ukrainians into the postwar period. In – Jews
returned to Ukraine from service in the army or evacuation camps in Tashkent and found that their relatives had been killed, their apartments occupied,
and their furniture and other belongings dispersed. Jewish attempts to reclaim
their dwellings angered Ukrainians who occupied them during the war and
who argued that the Jewish returnees had not done their part to defeat the
Germans. Such disputes often erupted into fights, and pogroms occurred in
Dnipropetrovs’k and Kiev. In Dnipropetrovs’k an angry mob attacked the Jews,
yelling ‘‘Death to the kikes’’ and ‘‘Thirty-seven thousand kikes [have] already
been slaughtered [by the Nazis], we’ll finish off the rest.’’ 16 Such outbursts as
well as the return of official anti-Semitism across Soviet state and party institutions silenced many Jewish survivors. At the same time, as anthropologist
Rebecca Golbert has observed, ‘‘private acts of remembrance continued in the
face of public silences.’’ Among these private acts were ‘‘annual visits to the
former camp and mass grave sites.’’ 17
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, citizens of the newly independent
Ukraine have been grappling with these mixed legacies as they try to build
their own nation.18 In the s, after nearly fifty years of Soviet repression of
the Holocaust, wartime survivors and their descendants began to openly come
to terms with the war. Many Jews from Israel and North America returned to
Ukraine to reclaim their heritage, often initiating the restoration of synagogues
and Jewish schools. Former Soviet commemorative plaques meant to honor
those killed in World War II have been altered to reveal that among the ‘‘peaceful Soviet citizens’’ were a significant number of Jewish victims.19 A new Holocaust memorial was erected in Zhytomyr. Yet deep-seated prejudices persist despite the dwindling Jewish population in Ukraine. The memorial in Zhytomyr
was vandalized in , and anti-Semitic hooligans desecrated a new plaque
at Babi Yar in . As a political movement, Ukrainian nationalism continues
to be tainted by its wartime history. Eastern Ukrainians remain suspicious of
Galician-based nationalism and condemn the OUN for its collaboration with
the Nazis and perpetration of atrocities against Poles and Jews. Meanwhile, the
revered ‘‘heroes of the Soviet Union’’ and other medal-adorned Red Army veterans who valiantly defeated Nazism are fading from the scene. And the Soviet
empire that they fought for is now discredited—deemed another disastrous
political experiment that, along with Nazism, destroyed Ukraine’s twentieth
century and now haunts its twenty-first.
Legacies of Nazi Rule

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Appendix
German and Ukrainian Spellings of Place Names
German spelling
Andruschewka
Baranowka
Baraschi
Basar
Berditschew
Bila Zerkwa
Bilopilje
Bragin
Brailow
Brussilow
Chmelnik
Choiniki
Czernowitz
Daschew
Dschulinka
Dsershinsk
Emiltschino
Gaissin
Gorodniza
Illjinzy
Januschpol
Jarun
Jelsk
Kalinkowischi
Kalinowka
KamenezPodolsk
Kasatin
Komarin
Komssomolskoje
Kornin
Korosten
Korostyschew
Leltschizy
Ukrainian spelling
Andrushivka
Baranivka
Barashi
Bazar
Berdychiv
Biela Tserkva
Bilopil’e
Bragin
Brailiv
Brusyliv
Khmil’nyk
Khoiniki
Chernivtsi
Dashiv
Dzulinka
Dzerzhyns’k
Emil’chyne
Haisyn
Horodnytsia
Illintsi
Ivanpil’
Iarun’
El’sk
Kalinkovichi
Kalynivka
Kam’ianets’Podil’s’kyi
Koziatyn
Komarin
Komsomol’s’ke
Kornyn
Korosten’
Korostyshiv
Lel’chitsy
German spelling
Lemberg
Lipowez
Litin
Ljubar
Lojew
Luginy
Luzk
Machnowka
Malin
Marchlewsk
Michailowka
Mogilew-Podolsk
Monastyrischtsche
Mosyr
Naroditschi
Narowlja
Nemirow
Nikolajew
Nowograd-Wolynski
(Zwiahel)
Nowo Miropol
Olewsk
Oratowo
Owrutsch
Petrikow
Pliskow
Pogrebischtsche
Polessia, Polesje
Popelnja
Potijewka
Pripjet
Radomyschl
Retschiza
Rushin
Ukrainian spelling
Lviv
Lypovets’
Lityn
Liubar
Loiev
Lugyny
Luts’k
Machnivka
Malyn
Markhlevsk (Dovbysh)
Mykhailivka
Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyi
Monastyryshche
Mazyr
Narodychi
Narovlia
Nemyriv
Nikolaev
Novohrad-Volyns’kyi
(Zviahel)
Novyi Muropil’
Olevs’k
Orativ
Ovruch
Petrikiv
Plyskiv
Pohrebyshche
Polissia
Popil’nia
Potievka
Pripiat’
Radomyshl’
Retchiza
Ruzhyn
German spelling
Schepetowka
Shitkowitschi
Shitomir, Shytomyr,
Zhitomir
Slowetschno
Ssamgorodok
Ssitkowzy
Strishawka
Teplik
Trojanow
Tschepowitschi

Appendix
Ukrainian spelling
Shepetivka
Zhitkovichi
Zhytomyr
Slovecho
Samhorodok
Sitkivtsi
Strizhavka
Teplyk
Troianiv
Chopovychi
German spelling
Tschernjachow
Tscherwonoarmeisk
Tschudnow
Turbow
Turow
Ulanow
Wassiljewitschi
Winniza, Vinnitsa
Wolodarsk-Wolynski
Woronowiza
Wtscheraische
Ukrainian spelling
Cherniakhiv
Chervonoarmiis’k
Chudniv
Turbiv
Turov
Ulaniv
Vasilevichi
Vinnytsia
Volodarsk-Volyns’kyi
Voronovytsia
Vchoraishe
Notes
Abbreviations
BAL
Bundesarchiv Aussenstelle Ludwigsburg
BDC
Berlin Document Center
CSA
Central State Archive, Kiev
GARF
State Archives of the Russian Federation
IMT
Records from the Trial of the Major War Criminals before
the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, War Crimes, NA
KTB
Official War Diary
MHI
Military Historical Institute Archives, Prague
NA
United States National Archives, College Park, Md.
NMT
Records from the Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg
Military Tribunals, War Crimes, NA
RG
Record Group
RGVA
Russian State Military Archive, Moscow (former Osobyi Archive)
USHMM United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives
ZSA
Zhytomyr State Archives
Introduction
 Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, .
 Brown, A Biography of No Place.
 At the end of , there were  Reich Germans posted in the region’s commissariat offices, divided into twenty-five districts, known as Gebietskommissariate. In
Feb.  the region was remapped into twenty-six districts. ZSA, P--.
 On Hitler’s colonialism as an overseas venture with primarily economic interests,
see Townshend’s ‘‘Hitler and the Revival of German Colonialism,’’ in Nationalism and
Internationalism, ed. Earle, –. Hannah Arendt’s and Raphael Lemkin’s early
work on Nazism, genocide, and imperialism has been developed by Kamenetsky
in Secret Nazi Plans for Eastern Europe and W. Smith in The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism. Also see Lennox, Friedrichsmeyer, and Zantop, The Imperialist Imagination,
and Jürgen Zimmerer, ‘‘Colonialism and the Holocaust: Toward an Archeology of
Genocide,’’ in Moses, ed., Genocide and Settler Society.
 More recent studies of resettlement and the General Plan East include Aly and
Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung; Rössler, Schleiermacher, and Tollmien, eds., Der
‘‘Generalplan Ost’’; R.-D. Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg; and Aly, ‘‘Final Solution.’’
 Hitler, Mein Kampf, .
 The commissars dressed themselves in light-brown military-style suits adorned
with a gaudy display of medals and insignias. See the ‘‘Richtlinien für die Ausrichtung der Gefolgschaft: Das öffentliche Auftreten der Deutschen,’’ issued by the
HSSPF Ukraine,  June , USHMM, RG .m, reel , --. On
the expansionist theorists and ideologues, see Haushofer, Weltpolitik von Heute, and
Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastward.
 On Hitler’s remarks about ‘‘fertile’’ Ukrainian women and the sterilization policies
that resulted, see entry of  July , Hitler’s Table Talk, –. Bormann order,
 July , NA, RG , NO-. In a Koch memo about new rations for Ukrainians, he based this policy change on Hitler’s remark that wheat grew in abundance
around his Vinnytsia bunker while Reich Germans were going hungry. Koch order,
in ‘‘Vermerk über die Tagung in Rivne,’’ – Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R
/.
 Hegewald speech of Heinrich Himmler,  Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R/
p. .
 Paul Albert Scheer testimony,  Dec. , USHMM RG . Kiev. Witte et al.,
eds., Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers, –. On the famine in Kiev, see Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, –.
 On the radicalization process within the Hitler dictatorship, see Kershaw’s analysis of ‘‘working toward the Führer’’ in Hitler, –, .
 See Charles Sydnor, ‘‘Reinhard Heydrich: Der ‘ideale Nationalsozialist,’ ’’ in Die SS,
ed. Smelser and Syring, –, and Wistrich, Wer war wer, . On Heydrich’s decisive presence in Zhytomyr, see testimony of former SKa member, August Häfner,
 July , Trial of Kuno Callsen, BAL,  AR-Z /, .
 See Snyder, ‘‘The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing, ,’’ –.
Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany.
 These figures are based on the Soviet census of . Since the figures include portions of the Soviet oblasts of Vinnytsia and of Polissia, which fell within Romaniancontrolled Transnistria and the Reichskommissariat Ostland, respectively, they do
not correspond exactly with the projected agricultural output of the Generalbezirk
Zhytomyr. See the report of the Reich Ministry for the Eastern Occupied Territories, ‘‘Der Generalbezirk Shytomyr,’’  Mar. , pp. –, ZSA, Pc--. The
Zhytomyr Oblast (est. ) and the Vinnytsia Oblast (est. ) were separate administrative districts within the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. In pre-Soviet times, the
region around Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, and Berdychiv was known as the Podol area of
the Right Bank of the Dnepr. See Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, –.
 For an insightful account of Zhytomyr’s Polish history and then Soviet ‘‘de-Polonization’’ of the region, including Marklevsk, see Brown, A Biography of No Place,
–, –.
 Abteilung Statistik, Zhytomyr General Commissar’s office, Mar. . District
 Notes to Pages 3–14










population reports and occupational breakdowns, ZSA, P--. On industrialization’s impact on Ukrainian society in the interwar period, see Krawchenko,
Social Change and National Consciousness, –. On the impact of Soviet nationalities
policies on Ukrainians, see Liber, Soviet Nationality Policy. The failure of Ukrainization and Russification is well argued by Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire, –.
Weeks, Nation and State, and Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, –.
Potichnyj and Aster, eds., Ukrainian-Jewish Relations. See entries on Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, and Berdychiv in The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, ed. Spector.
Liubar,  percent; Olevs’k,  percent; Chudniv,  percent; Korosten’, ; percent; Khmil’nyk,  percent; Bershad,  percent; Illintsi,  percent; Tomashpil’,  percent; Tul’chyn,  percent. These  figures were compiled in  in
an unpublished report by the Office of Jewish Affairs and Emigration, Zhytomyr,
Ukraine. Also see Altshuler, Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust.
Tsarist policies were aimed at assimilation and secularization of the population
by restricting Hebrew printing and rabbinical education to Vilna and Zhytomyr.
Raisin, The Haskalah Movement in Russia, , , and . The population figures are
from the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, ed. Spector; see entries on Berdychiv and Zhytomyr.
See Sword, ed., The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces.
See Stumpp report covering his activities from Aug. to Sept. , sent to Bfh.
rückw.H.Geb.Süd. Ic, NA, RG , T-/R /-; also see a VoMi report of
 Oct. , ‘‘Volksdeutsche in Shitomir,’’ NA, RG , T-/R /-.
According to Buchsweiler, in  there were , ethnic Germans around Zhytomyr (in  about , remained); see Buchsweiler, Volksdeutsche in der Ukraine,
. German migration to Ukraine swelled in the eighteenth century when colonists were invited to develop the Volga region under Catherine the Great. By the
early twentieth century there were over  settlements in Ukraine with more then
, inhabitants. See ‘‘Braune Mappe: Die Zivilverwaltung in den besetzten Ostgebieten, Teil II: Reichskommissariat Ukraine,’’ GARF, --, and Fleischhauer and Pinkus, The Soviet Germans.
On the Soviet records of ethnic German settlements in Zhytomyr during the interwar period, see ZSA, P--, , . See also Martin, Affirmative Action Empire,
–.
Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany, :, .
During the s, the Nazis’ ‘‘Brothers in Need’’ reached Zhytomyr’s ethnic German population. See village surveys from the Zhytomyr region in – prepared
by Rosenberg’s agent Karl Stumpp, ZSA, P--.
According to Stumpp’s reports, which were prone to exaggeration, the population
of the Volksdeutsche villages of Zviahel, such as Vladyn with  persons, was reduced by at least half in . In the village of Makovits, out of a population of 
ethnic Germans in ,  persons were deported; in the village of Tesnovka,
Notes to Pages 14–16

the German population in  was  persons,  of whom were deported in
; in Neu Romanowka, the German population in  was  persons, 
of whom were deported in . In the village of Nikolajivka, the German population in  was  persons; it was reduced to  by . See Stumpp village
studies, ZSA, P--. On deportations and Hitler certificates of –, see
NA, RG , T-/R /-.
 On the Hitler-Stalin pact and the Volksdeutsche, see Kleist, Zwischen Hitler und Stalin,
–, .
Chapter One
 Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature.
 As historian Woodruff Smith has demonstrated, leading scholars of the Kaiserreich
have not stressed enough just how persistent and widespread the emigrationist,
settler colonialism idea and movement were in the s and ’s. See Smith, The
German Colonial Empire, ; Oelhafen von Schoellenbach, Die Besiedlung Deutsch Südwestafrikas, . A major in the Schutztruppe in SWA from  to , Oelhafen
von Schoellenbach argued that smart, robust Germans were exceptional colonizers
and settlers. Colonies complicated as well as solved the ‘‘woman question’’; see
Wildenthal, German Women for Empire.
 See Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, –, and Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, –. Lemkin’s unpublished manuscript on the history of genocide and
colonialism is among his papers at the American Jewish Historical Society, New
York, N.Y. I am grateful to John Docker and Ann Curthoys for bringing this material to my attention.
 Norman Goda, Tomorrow the World, and Zantop and Jameson, Colonial Fantasies.
 NMT, NO-. Reprinted in Kamenetsky, Secret Nazi Plans, – (appendix ).
 Also see Alan Steinweis, ‘‘Eastern Europe and the Notion of the ‘Frontier’ in Germany to ,’’ in Germany and Eastern Europe, ed. Bullivant, Giles, and Pape, –.
Grill and Jenkins, ‘‘The Nazis and the American South in the s,’’ –. Gröning and Wolschke-Bulmahn, Der Drang nach Osten, . For photos of migrating Volhynian Volksdeutschen in covered wagons, see du Prel, ed., Deutsche Generalgouvernement Polen.
 Black, ‘‘Askaris in the ‘Wild East.’’’
 See the chapter in Darré, Neuadel aus Blut und Boden, on the Hegehof, which resembled the later farming communities formed at Hegewald in –. Darré
was born in  in a German settlement in Argentina and attended a British public school as well as the Kolonialschule at Witzenhausen. See his biography in Das
Deutsche Führerlexikon /, –. See also Corni and Gies, ‘‘Blut und Boden.’’
 Wippermann, Der ‘‘deutsche Drang nach Osten.’’
 Steinweis, ‘‘Eastern Europe and the Notion of the ‘Frontier,’’’ –.
 Ibid., –.
 Herwig, ‘‘Geopolitik,’’ –.

Notes to Pages 16–20
 See the discussion of Germanic utopias in Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, ,
. On women, see Harvey, Women and the Nazi East, –.
 See the most recent analysis of Ludendorff ’s Ober Ost Administration: Liulevicius,
War Land on the Eastern Front, . See the discussion of Paul Rohrbach’s influence in
Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East, –. On comparisons of the First and Second World War occupations, see Torke and Himka, eds., German-Ukrainian Relations.
 See Ihor Kamenetsky, ‘‘German Colonization Plans in Ukraine during World Wars
I and II,’’ in German-Ukrainian Relations, ed. Torke and Himka, –.
 Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, –, and Harvey, Women and the Nazi East, –
.
 Noakes and Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, :–.
 From DNVP activist Gottlob Traub, cited in Murphy, The Heroic Earth, .
 Ibid., . On the Reich’s Colonial Association, see Hildebrand, Vom Reich zum Weltreich.
 Reprint of the Hossbach memorandum from  Nov.  meeting, in Hildebrand,
Vom Reich zum Weltreich, .
 Schmokel, Dream of Empire, .
 German ideologies of expansion—Lebensraum, settler colonialism, and Weltpolitik—are examined by W. Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism.
 Hitler monologue of  Sept. , Hitler’s Table Talk, .
 Hitler monologues of – Aug. , ibid., .
 Among the Germanic types Hitler counted the Dutch, Luxembourgers, Danes, the
Flemish, Swedes, Norwegians, Alsatians, and the blond-haired, blue-eyed Ukrainian children. According to Speer’s account, Hitler also stated that the loss of a
few hundred thousand Germans on the battlefield did not play a role, since these
losses could be easily made up in two or three years. Speer, Spandau, –.
 Kershaw, Hitler, –, –.
 Hitler monologue of  Aug. , Hitler’s Table Talk, –.
 Alsdorf, Indien, .
 Hitler’s Table Talk, –.
 Schmaltz and Sinner, ‘‘The Nazi Ethnographic Research of Georg Leibbrandt and
Karl Stumpp,’’ –.
 General Commissar Klemm memo to district commissars,  Feb. , ZSA,
P-c--. Books for administrators in the NSDAP library are listed in ZSA,
P---.
 Heinrich Himmler speech at Hegewald, Zhytomyr, Ukraine,  Sept. , NA, RG
, T-/R /p..
 On the general appeal of the British model and transfer of imperial concepts, see
Schumacher, ‘‘The American Way of Empire,’’ –.
 Nazi racial theorists were also fascinated with India, which they claimed as their
Aryan heritage. See Lixfield and Dow, Folklore and Fascism; Poliakov, The Aryan Myth;
and Kater, Das ‘‘Ahnenerbe’’ der SS.
Notes to Pages 21–27

 On the tabula rasa mentality and anti-Bolshevism, see Dr. Guilleaume’s ‘‘Gedanken
zur Verwaltungsorganisation des Ostraumes,’’ NA, RG , T-/R/-
(MR ), and Aly and Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung.
 Hitler’s Table Talk, –.
 Informationsblätter Polizeischulungsleiter, Der Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei
für die Ukraine, ‘‘Wie verhält sich die deutsche Polizei der einheimischen Bevölkerung im Osten gegenüber?’’  May , ZSA, P--a, p..
 Epp tried to convince the Nazi leadership and German public of the importance of
overseas colonies and contributed to the bitter anti-Versailles sentiment and rationales for remilitarizing Germany. See Epp’s Deutschlands koloniale Forderung.
 On passing references to Togo-Gesellschaft and Togo-Ost, see USHMM, RG
.M, reel  and reel , in the selected records from the former Archive of October Revolution, Kiev, now the CSA. The collaboration between the Kaiser’s agents
in Togo and Booker T. Washington’s institute has been explored in Zimmerman,
‘‘The Tuskegee Institute in German Togo and the Construction of Race in the Atlantic World.’’
 Wildenthal, German Women for Empire, .
 I am grateful to David Furber for the information on East Africans in the Warthegau, and additional material about colonialist thinking and policies in Poland. See
Litzmannstädter Zeitung, USHMM Newspaper Collection. Also see Furber’s doctoral
dissertation, ‘‘Going East.’’
 Kershaw, Hitler, –, .
Chapter Two
 In the northern section of the Commissariat, the Polissia lowlands, the ‘‘rate of
urbanization actually dropped by  per cent between  and ,’’ according to
Krawchenko, Social Change and National Consciousness, .
 An Abwehr official from Army Group South wrote this in Oct. . See ‘‘Stimmung
und Lage beim Einmarsch der deutschen Truppen,’’ Abwehr II bei Heeresgruppe
Süd,  Oct. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
 ‘‘Erlass Adolf Hitlers vom . Mai  über die Ausübung der Kriegsgerichtsbarkeit,’’ in Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, ed. N. Müller, , and Verbrechen der Wehrmacht,
ed. Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, –. For the pre-Barbarossa planning of mass murder with a particular emphasis on the complete annihilation of
the Jewish population, see Breitman, The Architect of Genocide, –.
 See testimony of Leeb, NMT, High Command Case XII, vol. , –. The Commissar Order is found in NA, RG , NOKW-. Bechler testified in Dec. .
See Breitman, The Architect of Genocide,  n. .
 On the Hitler address of  Mar.  and the orders leading up to the ‘‘Guidelines’’
and Commissar Order, see Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, ‘‘Kommissarbefehl und Massenexekutionen sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener,’’ in Anatomie des SS-Staates, ed. Buchheim et al., –.
 Notes to Pages 27–32
 This top-secret memo, ‘‘Guidelines,’’ was distributed to the division level by Jodl
with his instructions for further distribution (to battalion level on  June ).
Jodl ‘‘Guidelines’’ to division commanders, received by Security Division  on
 June , KTB SD Anlage, NA, RG , T-/R /–. Additional
documentation about the murder of civilians in conjunction with the invasion has
been published in Jacobsen, ‘‘Kommissarbefehl und Massenexekutionen,’’ –.
 The ‘‘Guidelines’’ memo was distributed to the company level. The OKW chief,
Alfred Jodl, set forth the use of this memo and propaganda measures for the invasion of June . See ‘‘Aus den Weisungen des Chefs des OKW vom Juni 
zur propagandistischen Beeinflussung der Angehörigen der Roten Armee und der
sowjetischen Zivilbevölkerung,’’ in Die Faschistische Okkupationspolitik, ed. N. Müller,
–.
 Meeting identified in the war diary of SD, under  June  entry. See specific instructions on the handling of civilians, ‘‘Freischärlern usw.,’’ and political
commissars in the meeting notes, ‘‘Kommandeur Besprechung vom  Juni ,’’
in KTB SD Anlage, NA, RG , T-/R / and –.
 Additionally, the Eleventh Army of German and Romanian troops fell under Army
Group South and served as the spearhead into Ukraine’s southern borderlands
(with Einsatzgruppe D). For a complete ‘‘order of battle’’ of Army Group South,
June–July , see Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, ed., Germany and the Second World War, :–.
 AOK  Ic/AO,  and  July , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
 Former WWII Soviet pilot from Zhytomyr, Pavlo Gorlach, interview by author,
 May , Zhytomyr, Ukraine.
 Mordechai Altshuler, ‘‘Escape and Evacuation of Soviet Jews,’’ in The Holocaust in the
Soviet Union, ed. Dobroszycki and Gurock, –.
 Ibid., .
 Later in July the SD found in Zhytomyr local Soviet orders for the systematic destruction of ‘‘the entire property of state, for example, buildings and supplies.’’
According to the SD, the Soviet order also called for the evacuation of political commissars, Russians, and ‘‘Jews.’’ Meldungen der Einsatzgruppen und -kommandos,
Einsatzgruppe C, Standort Chitomir [sic],  July , NA, RG ,T-/R /pp.
–. Some of the material destruction was described in the local newspaper. For
example, in the village of Baronivka there were, before the Nazi invasion, 
houses, but only seven remained. In Yaltsivka there had been  houses, but in
Sept. only nine remained; see Ukraïns’ke Slovo (Zhytomyr),  Sept. , ZSA, Newspaper Collection.
 Near the city of Zhytomyr, German SS and police discovered the mutilated remains
of former prisoners; body parts had been crammed into sewers and drain pipes
and dropped into wells. The SS took photos of the atrocities, generally for propaganda purposes, and retaliated against the local Jews who were publicly blamed for
the atrocities. See interrogation of Viktor Trill, Paul Blobel’s driver,  June ,
Notes to Pages 32–34















BAL,  AR-Z /; and article in Ukraïns’ke Slovo (Zhytomyr),  Aug. , ZSA,
Newspaper Collection.
See intelligence report of  Inf. Div. (Mot) to General Command of th A.K.,
 July . NA, RG , T-/R/.
See ‘‘Morgenmeldung  I.D. (mot)’’ from Oblt. Holtermann,  July , NA, RG
, T-/R/.
The Stalin Line, though based on the defensive principle of France’s Maginot Line,
was in Soviet Russia a disconnected network of fortified districts. In Zhytomyr sections of the Stalin Line were around Zviahel (Novohrad-Volyns’kyi) and Vinnytsia.
Clark, Barbarossa, –.
See report from ‘‘Zviahel’’ (MG Batls  and ) to AOK Panzergruppe I, dated  July
, NA, RG , T-/R/.
Panzer Gruppe , Abt. Ic/AO,  July , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
.Inf.Div Ic, to th AK Ic,  July  NA, RG , T-/R /– and
.
A report states that  to  percent carried the leaflet. Fernspruch  Pz.-Div.,
 July , NA, RG , T-/R /.
th AK to Panzergruppe  Ic/AO,  July , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
th AK to Panzergruppe I, , , and  July , NA, RG , T-/R /
, , –.
See report of AOK , Ic from  July , section (), NA, RG , T-/R
/.
AOK  Ic reported that around Zhytomyr and in the woods many tanks and planes
were abandoned by the Russians. NA, RG , T-/R/.
In addition to the Heydrich-Wagner agreement, their collusion was spelled out in
an OKH memo of  Apr.  about how the army should support the SS security
forces in their ‘‘special tasks.’’ See NMT, High Command Case XII, NOKW-
and NOKW-. These OKH documents about SD-military cooperation are reprinted in Anatomie des SS-Staates, ed. Buchheim et al., :–. Kuno Callsen, a
member of the Vorkommando of SKa, stated that the military column was interrupted by two vehicles of their commando, that the SD arrived in Zhytomyr ‘‘unter
Panzerdeckung.’’ Interrogation of Kuno Callsen,  June , Trial of Kuno Callsen, BAL,  AR-Z /; also described in Streit, Keine Kameraden, .
In addition to serving as the heads of household during wartime, young women in
Ukraine were often overburdened with three or four children by the age of twenty,
a situation stemming largely from the lack of contraception and Stalin’s ban on
abortions in ; see Ereignismeldung Einsatzgruppe C, Standort Zhitomir,  Aug.
, NA, RG , T-/R , –. Ereignismeldung Einsatzgruppe C,  Aug.
, NA, RG , T-/R . Krawchenko, Social Change and National Consciousness,
. On the population trends and increase of women in nonskilled and agricultural work, see Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society, , –.
There were also a number of petty bureaucrats from state and Communist Party
 Notes to Pages 34–36














offices who continued to work in the German administration. Abteilung Statistik, Zhytomyr General Commissariat, ZSA, P--. Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung
(Luts’k),  Feb. , , Library of Congress, newspaper microfilm .
Most could read; fewer among the peasantry could write. The population density
was on average forty-eight persons per square kilometer. On the lower end, the
population density in Olevs’k was eighteen persons per square kilometer. See surveys dated Oct. , Abteilung Statistik, Zhytomyr Commissariat, ZSA, P-.
Heyer, Die Orthodoxe Kirche in der Ukraine, –.
Army officials wrote that the Ukrainians in the Zhytomyr region responded with
‘‘surprising friendliness’’; see Bfh.rück.H.Geb. ,  July , NA, RG ,
T-/R /; and the intelligence report of AOK  (Ic) from  July , NA,
RG , T-/R /.
Ukrainian refugees interviewed in the early s explained that at first they were
unaware of Hitler’s racial ideology and the brutal nature of the Nazi regime, and
believed that the Germans were good people who ‘‘didn’t kill.’’ They were relieved that the Germans had forced out the Bolsheviks. See, for example, Human
Resources Research Institute, Harvard University Refugee Project, vol. , Interviews
no. , A Schedule, ; and no. , .
See Foreign Office report on Ukrainians – dated Mar. . NA, RG,
T-/R /–.
This leaflet is among the attachments to the war diary of AOK , from mid-July
 (it appears in German and Ukrainian). NA, RG , T-/R /. In
a second leaflet to the mayors or village elders, the army stressed that the Ukrainian leaders were responsible for order in their town and that agricultural quotas
had to be met until  Oct. . The leaflet closed with an appeal to religious
freedoms. KTB Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., leaflet dated  July , NA, RG ,
T-/R /.
Berkhoff, ‘‘Was There a Religious Revival . . . ?,’’ .
See the OUN-B activist report on Ukrainian activities near Zhytomyr (district
Tschernjachow),  July , ZSA, P--. Similar developments are described
in Heyer, Die Orthodoxe Kirche, –.
Berkhoff, ‘‘Was There a Religious Revival . . . ?,’’ –, and Harvest of Despair, –
.
Ilnytzkyj, Deutschland und die Ukraine, –; Matla, Pivdenna pokhidna hrupa, . Matla
was the leader of the southern marching group.
For lists of sympathizers by village, see the OUN-B file in ZSA, Pc--.
See Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, , –; and Matla, Pivdenna pokhidna hrupa,
, who describes the activists traveling by night through waterways.
The ID printing shop was discovered by the SD in Mar. . NA, RG , T-/R
/.
Myroslav Prokop (b. in Przemysl, ) attended L’viv and Berlin Universities. He
Notes to Pages 36–39











was imprisoned by the Poles in his campaign to resist Polonization of Ukrainian
schools in Galicia; when he was released in , he fled to Berlin. He was an
OUN-B underground leader, moving from L’viv to Kiev between July  and Apr.
. In Kiev, he was the editor of the nationalist organ Ideia i Chyn. In  he
organized the Ukrainian radio broadcast in the Carpathian Mountains, providing
news about Ukraine in French, English, and Ukrainian. He also helped organize the
Supreme Liberation Council in July . Author’s interview with Prokop,  Mar.
, Shevchenko Society, New York. Prokop’s identification with the youth is reflective of the composition of the OUN; in  the movement had nearly ,
members, and about half of them were under the age of twenty-one. Krawchenko,
Social Change and National Consciousness, .
See the captured OUN-B documents on the goals of revolution, ZSA, P--.
On the proclamation at L’viv and its suppression by the Germans, see Armstrong,
Ukrainian Nationalism, –.
Matla also describes the distribution of this ‘‘history’’ in Pivdenna pokhidna grupa,
. SD interrogations were led by Razesberger in Zhytomyr between Jan. and Mar.
. Many of those brought in were implicated by captured Bandera reports in
which their names appeared as sympathizers; some of those arrested had been
working in the German administration, such as Mykola Klymenko, who was the
Ukrainian mayor of Novyi Muropil’, Iwan Petschersky, an active militia and then
Schutzmann in Novohrad-Volyns’kyi, and Nikita Pyvovar, the chairman of the district administration of Cherniakhiv. ZSA, P--.
The nationalist ‘‘Buiny’’ also emphasized the heavy drinking among local leaders.
ZSA, P--.
Nationalist reports concur that the local Ukrainian militia plundered, murdered,
and molested civilians. See Security Division ’s report ‘‘Stand der Militärverwaltung,’’  Oct. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
Kornienko report of  July , ZSA, P--.
Ukrainians developed strong anti-Hungarian and anti-Romanian attitudes, calling
the Hungarians ‘‘Austrian Huns’’ because the Hungarian troops were pillaging the
farms and taking away everything that was ‘‘not nailed down.’’ Roques to General
Staff,  Sept , Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG , T-/R/-.
A former official of the Union of Germans Abroad and key negotiator with the
Soviets (–) over the resettlement of ethnic Germans from Soviet (East Poland) zones, Hoffmeyer was also named the Führer’s deputy for resettlement matters in treaties and agreements with Romania in . Koehl, RKFDV, . Heinemann, ‘‘Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut.’’
On early Vomi-SD campaigns applying the German People’s List, see Fleischhauer,
Das Dritte Reich, .
Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries, . Introduction to Klaus Siebert Case, BAL,  Js
/. Siebert was Hoffmeyer’s deputy in Transnistria –, and in  he was
made chief of the VoMi office in Zhytomyr.
 Notes to Pages 39–40
 See Einsatzgruppe C Report,  Sept. , ‘‘Lage der Volksdeutschen in Shitomir,’’
NA, RG , T-/R /–.
 Rosenberg responded to Stalin’s order about the evacuation of Volksdeutsche and
dissolution of the Volga German oblast by asserting that the Jews would be held responsible for the plight of the ethnic Germans under Soviet rule. See Fleischhauer,
‘‘The Ethnic Germans under Nazi Rule,’’ in Fleischhauer and Pinkus, The Soviet Germans: Past and Present, –.
 See the situation report of Gebietskommissar Schmidt of Novohrad-Volyns’kyi
from early , ZSA, P--.
 Karl Stumpp report of Aug. , from CSA, Kiev, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel . The office of Gebietskommissar Schmidt in Novohrad-Volyns’kyi
also reported that Ukrainians concealed ethnic Germans during the Soviet retreat;
see the ‘‘situation report,’’ early  (date illegible), ZSA, P--.
 See ‘‘RR’’ report of  July , ZSA, P--.
 SD case of Mark Koval’s’kyi, Dec. , ZSA, P--.
 See Boss statements of  June  and  July , Kuno Callsen et al., BAL,
 AR-Z /. On the Volksdeutsche informant network attached to EGC, see
the report of  Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R /. In another case the
female ethnic German translator attached to the Khmil’nyk gendarmerie identified
Jews and was accused of shooting Jewish children during a ghetto-clearing action
there; see ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Litin Commissariat Case, BAL, a AR-Z /,
p. . Outside the Zhytomyr region, in the Romanian-occupied Ukrainian territory
known as Transnistria, members of the ethnic German ‘‘Selbstschutz’’ were significant perpetrators of the Holocaust.
 See the reports of Commander Markull on appointing native district leaders, Aug.
, Vinnytsia State Archive, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M,
reel .
 On Polish persecution of Ukrainians, see German Consul’s files from L’viv and
Katowice, –, NA, RG , DW Files, Box , folder a.
 See ‘‘RR’’ reports, ZSA, P--. Later the OUN-B lashed out against the Poles in
; the Polish underground retaliated, resulting in a near civil war. The Germans
used photographs of these Polish-Ukrainian atrocities to promote themselves as
civilized and to portray the Ukrainian nationalists and Poles as savages. See RKU
decree about Ukrainian-Polish atrocities,  May , ZSA, P--; and General Commissar Zhytomyr ‘‘Lagebericht,’’  June  (which mentions a meeting
with Rosenberg in Rivne to discuss Polish atrocities against Ukrainians), Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R/. Armstrong describes Ukrainian-Polish conflicts, Ukrainian
Nationalism,  n. . The worst clashes occurred in Volhynia; see Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, –.
 See OUN-B reports, ZSA, P--; Berkhoff, ‘‘Was There a Religious Revival . . . ?,’’ .
 Ukraïns’ke Slovo (Zhytomyr),  July , ZSA, Newspaper Collection.
Notes to Pages 41–43

 This order was issued by the General Staff of the th AK to Panzergruppe I on
 July , NA, RG , T-/R /.
 See ‘‘Besondere Anordnungen für die Behandlung der ukrainischen Frage,’’ NA, RG
, T-/R /–. Panzergruppe I, Ic/AO,  July , NA, RG , T-/R
/; KTB SD Anlage zum Div. Befehl Nr. , ‘‘Merkblatt über Sofortaufgaben der Ortskommandanturen,’’ NA, RG , T-/R /–; AOK
, Ic/AO,  Aug. ; NA, RG , T-/R /.
 See report of Panzergruppe I, Ic/AO, NA, RG , T-/R /.
 Division Orders of SD,  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
 The notice to form a Ukrainian police in the city of Zhytomyr appeared in Ukraïns’ke
Slovo (Zhytomyr),  July , ZSA, Newspaper Collection.








Chapter Three
The Wehrmacht field commander in Zhytomyr was Colonel Riedl, who was succeeded by Colonel Kefer (FK ). By the end of July, field commanders were also
posted at Zviahel (Novohrad-Volyns’kyi) and Berdychiv; during Aug. the army
posted more commanders in Korosten’, Ovruch, Koziatyn, Korostyshiv, and
Radomyshl’.
As more representatives of German agencies began to arrive, departments of the
oblast administration were phased out, and Ukrainians were sent to the German
labor office for reassignment. Order to transfer Zhytomyr to Roques jurisdiction,
 July , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
According to a member of SKa, one of the main reasons that they ventured to this
town in the first weeks was the operating food industries that lay on a good street
about fifty kilometers northeast of Zhytomyr. Kuno Callsen Trial, BAL,  AR-Z
/, Urteil, Fall VII Radomyshl’, .
See report of Field Commander , Dr. Markull,  Aug. . RGVA, --,
microfilm held at USHMM, RG.M., reel . Vinnytsia leaders are also mentioned in Weiner, Making Sense of War, , and Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism,
.
On militia and plundering, see Ukraïns’ke Slovo (Zhytomyr),  Aug. , ZSA,
Newspaper Collection. Regarding the Ukrainian police and other aides, see FK
 report of  Aug. , RGVA, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M., reel .
The troop commander established the administration on  July . See FK 
report of  Aug. , Osobyi --, microfilm at USHMM, RG .M.,
reel . See Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, . See reports of Markull, FK ,
‘‘Lageberichte,’’  Aug.  and  Aug.  from RGVA, --, microfilm
held at USHMM, RG .M., reel .
See FK  Abt VII (Mil-Verw.), reports of  Aug.,  Aug.,  Aug.,  Aug. ,
RGVA, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M., reel .
See Roques order of  July , NA, RG , T-/R /–. ‘‘Resettlement
 Notes to Pages 43–47












opportunity’’ refers to the Nazi-Soviet agreement that ethnic Germans in Soviet
zones be allowed to resettle to the Reich. On treaties of –, see Koehl, RKFDV.
Roques order of  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /; Holos Volyni (Zhytomyr),  Oct , ZSA, Newspaper Collection.
According to Markull’s report, the SD decimated the first ‘‘Judenrat’’ in Aug.; the
new Jewish Council was generally cooperating, though one member had to be
eliminated for ‘‘political incrimination.’’ See FK  report of  Aug. , RGVA,
--, microfilm held at USHMM, RG M., reel . On the asylum in
Vinnytsia, see Alexander Kruglov, Unichtozhenie evreiskogo naseleniia v Vinnitskoi oblasti
v –.
KTB SD Anlage zum Div. Befehl Nr. , ‘‘Merkblatt über Sofortaufgaben der
Ortskommandanturen,’’ NA, RG , T-/R /–.
These locations are situated between the Dnister and Bug rivers, which were later
part of Romanian-occupied Ukraine.
A week following this trip, Markull traveled to the north, toward Koziatyn and Berdychiv, where he came across more Reich Germans in building battalions and railway troops. Local administrators under the direction of German town and field
commanders had also begun repair work and even the reopening of schools. FK
 report of  Aug. , RGVA, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M., reel .
See the Seventeenth Army Headquarters order on the formation of local administrations, NA, RG , T-/R /.
See the FK  report of  Aug. , RGVA, --, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG.M., reel . A similar report details the population composition and local leaders found at Lityn, Khmil’nyk, Ulaniv, Machnivka, Samhorodok, Kalynivka, Voronovytsia, and Nemyriv. See the FK  report of  Aug. ,
RGVA, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG.M., reel .
FK  reports of Aug. , RGVA, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M., reel ; General Commissar’s ‘‘Lagebericht,’’  June , Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R/. Brown, A Biography of No Place, .
See the German order on the formation of police in Zhytomyr and Berdychiv, signed
by Iatseniuk, which specified that there should be one policeman for every ten
households. Ukraïns’ke Slovo (Zhytomyr),  July , ZSA, Newspaper Collection.
See order of Seventeenth Army Headquarters, Vinnytsia,  July , NA, RG ,
T-/R /.
Black, ‘‘Police Auxiliaries for Operation Reinhard.’’ I am grateful to Dr. Black for material on Trawniki guards from Zhytomyr.
On the army’s formation of Ukrainian Hilfspolizei and militia groups, see  July
 order, NA, RG , T-/R /-; and  Sept.  order, NA, RG ,
T-/R /-. The formation of militias by the army is documented
by the OUN-B underground situation reports, July–Nov. , ZSA, P--; on
 July , in Ukraïns’ke Slovo, the army commander announced the formation
Notes to Pages 47–50














of Ukrainian police. See Army Group South Rundstedt order on the formation of
Ukrainian Hilfspolizei, which he placed under the command of the army’s security divisions and the HSSPF, NA, RG , T-/R/–. Captain Dietrich
of SD tally of Hilfspolizei,  Oct. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
Records of the FK  Vinnytsia, Aug, , RGVA, --, USHMM, RG
.M., reel .
See the SS and police leader from Ruzhyn’s ‘‘Tätigkeitsbericht’’ on ‘‘Witowzi,’’ Mar.
, ZSA, P--.
See letters, many written by women, in Vinnytsia State Archive, P--, microfilm held at USHMM, RG.M, reel .
Letter of  Aug. , regarding Cholm POW camp, Vinnytsia State Archive, P-, microfilm held at USHMM, RG.M, reel .
See the announcement about a Ukrainian Red Cross in Holos Volyni (Zhytomyr),
 Nov. , ZSA, Newspaper Collection.
See FK , Lagebericht, section (), Arbeitsamt,  Aug. , RGVA, --,
microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M., reel .
See KTB SD Anlage zum Div. Befehl Nr. , ‘‘Merkblatt über Sofortaufgaben
der Ortskommandanturen,’’ NA, RG , T-/R /.
See the order by Roques stating that anyone who did not register for work would
be treated as a partisan and shot. Ukraïns’ke Slovo (Zhytomyr),  Aug. , ZSA,
Newspaper Collection; also see the German order presented by Bürgermeister Pavlovsky, Zhytomyr, stating that those who did not work would not receive goods and
rations. Ukraïns’ke Slovo (Zhytomyr),  Aug. , ZSA, Newspaper Collection.
Soviet raion leaders received  rubles. The Germans promoted these higher
wages in the first weeks of the occupation before inflation set in; the wages later
proved to be inadequate. See German report on wages for local leaders,  Aug.
, Bfh. rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG, T-/R /–. The Soviet wages
are from Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, .
The ‘‘Dienstanweisung für den Rayonchef ’’ contained broadly defined measures,
such as maintaining peace and order; subordinates turned them into specific practices. Compare FK Abt VII,  July , RGVA, --, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG.M., reel , with Vinnytsia State Archives -c-, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
See the Jan Lazar order, from Tul’chyn,  Nov. : ‘‘Any mayors who do not comply with German orders or who issue false IDs will be treated like spies.’’ Vinnytsia
State Archive, P-c-, microfilm held at USHMM, RG.M, reel .
Keitel memo of  Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R /. Like Reichenau’s
memo that followed, the highest-level commanders sought to impress upon subordinates the ideological basis of the campaign and anti-Jewish measures. Reichenau
order of  Oct. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
Soviet sources focus on Markull, stating that as early as  July  he ordered the
killing of twenty-five hostages in the quarry near Pjatnitschany and an additional
 Notes to Pages 50–52













 persons in the beginning of Aug. (most of the victims’ names were Jewish).
See the Soviet (Russian, Ukrainian, and Jewish) witness statements, investigation
of Schmidt and Danner, BAL, a AR-Z / and /, , , , and in
History Teaches a Lesson, .
Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, .
See Chief of General Staff memo drafted to troops, AOK  Ic/AO,  July , NA,
RG , T-/R /.
One of the first published sources on Wehrmacht crimes was Major Rössler’s report concerning the killing of Zhytomyr’s Jews; a reprint is in N. Müller, Okkupation,
Raub, Vernichtung.
Roques was born in ; he served as a general staff officer in World War I and
became a divisional commander in Dec. . He was commander of Rear Area
Army Group South from Mar.  until  June  (due to illness, he was replaced by Erich Friderici from  Oct.  to  Jan. ). Later he was appointed
commander of Rear Army Area Group A (Caucasus) and retired with the rank of
lieutenant general in Dec. . Roques was convicted by the American Military
Tribunal at Nuremberg. See NMT, vol. , .
See Roques secret order ‘‘Befriedungsmassnahmen,’’  July  in KTB
Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG , T-/R /. Secret Order of Commander Rear Army South stated that recently ‘‘soldiers and officers have on their
own undertaken the shooting of Jews . . . but this is expressly the work of the
HSSPF.’’  Sept. , KTB SD, NA, RG , T-/R /.
Kriegsgerichtliche Verurteilungen,  Nov. – Dec. , ZSA, P--.
As the military commander of Nazi-occupied France, Stülpnagel was later associated with the resistance groups around Halder and Beck and executed at Plötzensee (after a failed suicide attempt). He was responsible for ruthless crimes committed against civilians in Ukraine and in France, and so his association with the
resistance was not based on a moral crusade against Nazism but rather a conservative, nationalist attempt to prevent Germany’s defeat by Hitler. A critical biography
is lacking; see basic biographical information in Wistrich, Wer war wer, .
Stülpnagel order,  July , KTB, AOK , NA, RG , T-/R /.
See Stülpnagel order of  Aug. , RGVA, --, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG .M., reel .
Schräder report on the handling of civilians, July  , NA, RG , T-/R
/.
Emphasis in the original. ‘‘Behandlung der Bevölkerung und Aufrechterhaltung der
Disziplin,’’  Aug. , KTB AOK , record from AOK  Ic/AO, NA, RG ,
T-/R /.
An army liaison officer to the SD was posted in the intelligence unit (Ic) of army
headquarters. See  July  order, KTB AOK  Ic/AO, NA, RG , T-/R
/.
AOK  order of  Aug. , KTB SD Anlage, NA, RG , T-/R /
Notes to Pages 53–55










. About this time Reichenau also personally stood before a delegation of
army and SS leaders of the First SS Brigade and expressed his recognition of the
excellent successes garnered from the employment of officers and men of the
EK in the area of Korosten’. Lagebericht,  Aug. , . SS Brigade, KTB Kommandostab RFSS, Records of the MHI, Prague, microfilm at USHMM, RG .M,
reel .
EGC event report of  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R/.
Reichenau order of  Oct. , approved by Hitler and distributed to the battalion level. NA, RG , T-/R /.
KTB Kommandostab RFSS, MHI, Prague, carton , microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel ; also see Büchler, ‘‘Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS,’’ –.
As mentioned, one company of Orpo Battalion  was used by the city commander
of Zhytomyr, Josef Riedl, for police tasks in the first weeks of occupation as of
 July. The Orpo battalion was joined by Geheime Feldpolizei units and Landesschützenverbände. See war diary entry of  Sept.  and Divisionsbefehl of  July
 in KTB SD, NA, RG , T-/R /–,  and .
See KTB Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., ‘‘-tägige Meldung,’’  July , NA, RG ,
T-/R /.
The Breslau Orpo battalion was one of the nine motorized battalions assigned to
the army’s Security Divisions but not ‘‘fulfilling their tasks from the basic orders’’
of Himmler. The other Orpo battalions in the Zhytomyr region (nos. , , ,
) received orders from Higher SS and Police Leader Jeckeln. The Himmler order
of  May  regarding Orpo units in the East is reprinted in Der Krieg gegen die
Sowjetunion –, –. Assignment of Orpo  (Breslau) in KTB SD,
 May , NA, RG , T-/R /.
The Security Division  briefing about executions of commissars and the conduct of troops in Russia occurred on  June and  June ; KTB SD, NA,
RG , T-/R /–.
The commander of Occupied Rear Army South wrote that in ‘‘cleansing’’ operations between Fastiv and Ovruch Jeckeln should work together with units of SD
;  Sept. , KTB Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG,  T-/R /.
See intelligence activity report about military secret field police and HSSPF units’
screening and handling of civilians and ‘‘smooth’’ relations with SD; – Aug.
, KTB Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG , T-/R  /–. Security
Division  coordinated operations with HSSPF northeast of Zviahel (NovohradVolyns’kyi) and in Rivne; KTB Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG , T-/R /
–, –.
Ereignismeldungen der Einsatzgruppen und -kommandos,  July , NA, RG
, T-/R /p. . The SD  war diary shows a total of , civilians and
POWs captured between  July and  Sept. ; of these, seventy-eight were Jews
who were killed for not wearing armbands, for ‘‘assisting’’ partisans, or for hiding
weapons. Infantry Regiment  was also active in the Pripiat’ Marshes on  Sept.
 Notes to Pages 55–57










 and supported by L.S.Btl ; KTB SD, NA, RG , T-/R /–
.
KTB SD, NA, RG , T-/R /–.
SD in Vinnytsia, like SD in Zhytomyr, went out on ‘‘cleansing’’ operations
in the forests and villages that locals claimed were partisan areas. For Khmil’nyk
action, Fernspruch,  Aug. , and Roques report to OKH Gen Qu,  Aug. ,
re: ‘‘Säuberung des noch unsicheren Gebietes,’’ see KTB Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd.,
NA, RG , T-/R / and –.
Divisionsbefehl of  Aug. , KTB SD, NA, RG , T-/R /.
In the military reports that refer to ‘‘cleansing campaigns,’’ the Germans tended to
use interchangeably terms such as ‘‘partisan,’’ ‘‘insurgent,’’ ‘‘commissar,’’ ‘‘Bolshevik,’’ and ‘‘Jew.’’ The mixed terminology caused some confusion about how to categorize and treat captured prisoners. See Fernspruch of SD, dated  Aug. ,
KTB Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG , T-/R /.AOK; KTB,  July
, Re: treatment of enemy civilians (partisans, youth gangs) and Russian POWs,
NA, RG , T-, r , frame –. This term, ‘‘Freischärler,’’ was used
on a list of those targeted for execution, as defined in the pre-invasion ‘‘Guidelines’’
and Commissar Order; see Anatomie des SS-Staates, ed. Buchheim et al., :. On the
use of vague terminology as a deliberate concealment of crimes, see statements of
Ernst Oscar Consee,  Mar. , Trial of Kuno Callsen, BAL,  AR-Z /.
See Roques to OKH General Staff, ‘‘-tägige Meldung,’’  Aug. , in KTB of
the Commander of the Rear Army Area South, NA, RG , T/R /.
The actions of the First SS Brigade under AOK  in Zhytomyr best represent the
intersection of army and SS goals of ‘‘pacifying’’ areas by killing and interning civilians (nearly all Jews) and POWs. German reports often did not specify whether the
Jews were men, women, or children. For these combined SS and military ‘‘cleansing’’ operations, see the war diary of Kommandostab RFSS, MHI, Prague, carton ,
microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel ; and the war diary of Bfh.rückw.H.
Geb.Süd., NA, RG , T-/R /–. In his ‘‘Einsatzbefehl,’’ HSSPF Jeckeln wrote that during the antipartisan action female agents and Jews should be
‘‘handled accordingly’’—for example, executed; Jeckeln order of  July , in
KTB Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG , T-/R/–.
Arad, Krakowski, and Spector, eds., The Einsatzgruppen Reports, .
See Markull (FK ) report to SD,  Aug. , p. , and  Aug. , p. ,
RGVA, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M., reel .
After action reports of Security Division  and SS brigades in Emil’chyne,  Aug.
, NA, RG , T-/R / and , HSSPF Jeckeln met with Sixth
Army officers on  July  at Zhytomyr to discuss SS brigade cleansing action
scheduled for  July in the woods near Shepetivka; NA, RG , T-/R /
and –. The First SS Brigade was made available to the AOK  for special
security tasks in the rear areas; Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
Ukrainians in the villages were also able to identify who was an outsider and asked
Notes to Pages 57–58

















the German authorities where these outsiders should go. At first, Ukrainians may
not have realized that their inquiries were fatal for the outsiders; but once they did
understand, some tried to hide POWs. Panzergruppe I Ic/AO,  July , NA, RG
, T-/R /. Author’s interview with Pavlo Gorlach, whose family
hid a Russian POW.
See the ‘‘Operational Situation Report USSR no.,’’  Sept. , Einsatzgruppe C, in The Einsatzgruppen Reports, ed. Arad, Krawkowski, and Spector, .
According to Bormann’s notes from a meeting of  July , Hitler stated, ‘‘Dieser
Partisanenkrieg hat auch wieder seinen Vorteil; er gibt uns die Möglichkeit auszurotten, was sich gegen uns stellt.’’ N. Müller, ed., Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik,
. This is also examined in Büchler, ‘‘Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS,’’ .
See report of Infantry Regiment ,  Aug. , in KTB SD Anlage, NA, RG
, T-/R /–.
Streit, Keine Kameraden,  n. .
Document #, Zhytomyrshchyna v period, . This ‘‘reprint’’ of the Aug.  bulletin
describes German accomplices in these tortures as Ukrainian Petliurists (nationalists).
Gross, Neighbors.
AOK  order of  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
Attachment Division Order # (no date), on handling of civilian prisoners, KTB
SD, NA, RG , T-/R /–.
Ibid. The official also specified that no one from the area north of Zhytomyr near
the army transport route could be released; this was a critical supply route for the
Sixth Army, which was losing momentum in its northern advance on Kiev, and it
was also a target of Soviet attacks.
Berkhoff, ‘‘The ‘Russian’ Prisoners of War in Nazi-Ruled Ukraine,’’ –. Dallin,
German Rule, –.
OKW Directive of  June , NA, RG , NOKW-, and Dallin, German Rule,
.
Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, –.
Streit, Keine Kameraden, –, .
OKH order, ‘‘Behandlung feindlicher Zivilpersonen und russischer Kriegsgefangener im rückwärtigen Heeresgebiet,’’  July , NA, RG , T-/R/
–. Also see Roques’s secret order to shoot POWs because they had not
complied with German order to surrender to authorities, ‘‘Befriedungsmassnahmen,’’ dated  July . NA, RG , T-/R /.
See camps identified under entry of  July , war diary of Security Division ,
NA, RG , T-/R/.
Stalag  was set up in Zhytomyr on  Sept.  and remained until the evacuation of Nov. . A postwar case against the camp personnel of Stalag  was
pursued in West Germany, Dortmund prosecution  Js /, BAL,  AR-Z /,
but not brought to trial. The subcamp of Stalag  located in Berdychiv was situ-
 Notes to Pages 58–61








ated in the former Soviet military barracks at the edge of town. A subcamp of Stalag
 (Vinnytsia) was also established in Berdychiv, to which POWs from Darnitsa
near Kiev were transferred until the summer of . Case against Friedrich Becker
(SD office Berdychiv), BAL, AR-Z /, vol. , –.
Vlasov was brought there at the end of July  to begin negotiations with members of the Nazi elite about the formation of the army. On Vlasov and the ‘‘Prominente’’ camp near Vinnytsia, where ‘‘there were about – prisoners who were
relatively well-treated and given German rations,’’ see Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement, –. Also see OKH top-secret report about POWs in
the operational areas and Romania,  Feb. , WiID/, Anlage , BundesarchivMilitärarchiv Freiburg.
OKH order, ‘‘Kriegsgefangenen-Arbeitseinsatz und -Abschub,’’ and Anlage, ‘‘Russische Kriegsgefangene,’’ dated  July . NA, RG , T/R /–
and –.
See Anlage , ‘‘Russische Kriegsgefangene’’ (no date; early Aug.?), KTB SD, NA,
RG , T-/R /–. In these instructions Heydrich advised his commandos not to carry out the executions of prisoners in or near the camp, unless
executions were necessary for ‘‘reasons of camp discipline.’’ Heydrich order from
NMT, High Command Case XII (Leeb et al.), vol. , –. On the summer and fall
 Heydrich orders, see the reprints of his Einsatzbefehle , , and  in Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion, ed. Klein, –, –.
During the invasion, initial German reports concerning POWs mention on several
occasions the high number of Central Asians found in the Red Army ranks. As a
racial category, these persons were slated for destruction by the Nazis. They were
separated from the other POWs and killed along with the Jews; however, it is not
clear from SS and army documents of  how many were captured and killed in
the Zhytomyr region. See instructions for the handling of POWs, KTB SD, Aug.
, NA, RG , T-/R /; also,  Inf.Div Ic to th AK,  July ,
T-/R /.
Fruechte testified further: ‘‘The Jews whom we kept separated in the camps were,
without exception, shot by the Security Service commandos that arrived later.’’
NMT, High Command Case XII, vol. , –.
Memorandum of Dr. Letsch, Advisor, Office of the Reich Minister of Labor, meeting of  Dec. . NMT, High Command Case XII (Leeb et al.), vol. , .
Those working in operational areas were assigned to more lethal tasks such as digging up mines. POW labor in the rear areas was generally related to construction
and repair work. See memo from SD Ia to Stalag and Dulag Kommandanten, regarding skilled workers and specialists among the POWs,  July , KTB SD
Anlage, NA, RG , T-/R /.
For example, two labor companies of three hundred POWs were taken from Zhytomyr Dulag for street work under the direction of the Organization Todt. See war
diary entry of  Sept. , KTB SD, NA, RG, T-/R /. ReNotes to Pages 61–62








leased Ukrainian POWs who could not be returned to their nearby hometowns
were the first to be formed into labor units; see AOK  O.Qu., ‘‘Befehl zur Bildung von ukrainischen Arbeitskompanien,’’  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R
/–.
Reconstruction of roadways was the top priority as the conversion of Russian railway gauges to fit German trains was not progressing fast enough to meet the transport needs. As of  Oct.  the only rail route that had German rail gauges was
the Berdychiv-to-Zhytomyr line; the remaining routes to Kiev or north to Ovruch
were not passable. See map dated  Oct. , KTB SD Anlage, NA, RG ,
T-/R /. The roadway from Zviahel over Zhytomyr to Kiev, however,
was in good condition.
On POWs and road construction, see SD, [illegible day of month] Sept. ,
SD order, NA, RG , T-/R /; and von Krosigk memos of  Aug.
,  Sept. , KTB Bfh. rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG , T-/R / and
–.
On Wehrmacht village commander stations placed near DG camps, see SD Anlage, NA, RG , T-/R /. On POW camp Hnivan’, see interrogation
of former camp commandant Karl Klenk, BAL,  AR-Z /, vol. , –,
–.
OKH General Staff orders regarding ‘‘Kriegsgefangenen-Arbeitseinsatz und
-Abschub,’’  July , in KTB SD Anlage, NA, RG , T-/R/–
.
Wounded or ill POWs were not treated by the Germans and were left to die among
the other prisoners or were executed. They were separated as ‘‘unfit’’ for labor, and
some were placed in ‘‘military hospitals’’ or in special sections of camps, found, for
example, in Berdychiv. A group of crippled POWs survived in the Berdychiv camp
until Dec.  when the SD ordered their execution, but some escaped during the
transport to the killing site; see USSR-, Proceedings – Feb. , IMT, vol. ,
.
After these thousands were left for some time in the inadequate conditions of
the open air ‘‘camp’’ in Zviahel (Novohrad-Volyns’kyi), the survivors were marched
to a stationary camp in Shepetivka. See ‘‘Bericht’’ of Security Division  from
Major Münchau,  Aug. , KTB Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG , T-/R /
. In Haisyn, where the population was about fifteen thousand, the local Dulag contained at least five thousand POWs. AOK  report of  Aug. , NA, RG
, T-/R /.
On  Oct. , twelve thousand POWs from Kiev were transported to Zhytomyr; requests for the transfer of more POWs to Zhytomyr were refused by local
commanders because of severe overcrowding. KTB SD, NA, RG , T-/R
/. The figure of , Soviet prisoners is from Streit, Keine Kameraden,
.
 Notes to Pages 62–63
 On the Reichenau order of  Oct. , see Berkhoff, ‘‘The ‘Russian’ Prisoners of
War in Nazi-Ruled Ukraine,’’ . This order appeared after lower-level security personnel began shooting POWs during the marches in September.
 These transports ended up in Berdychiv because the prisoners were too exhausted
to continue to Shepetivka. The SD officer expressed regret that the prisoners in
this ghastly state were seen by the local population; it was, he believed, a public embarrassment to the army. See SD Abt. Ic to Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd, Betr: ‘‘Transporte von Kriegsgefangenen,’’  Sept. , KTB SD NA, RG , T-/R
/. On the death marches, see Berkhoff, ‘‘The ‘Russian’ Prisoners of War
in Nazi-Ruled Ukraine,’’ –.
 See report to General Thomas regarding POWs in civil occupied areas,  Nov. ,
NA, RG , IMT, PS-.
 Gestapo Chief Müller telegram on POWs’ mortality rate, NA, RG  IMT PS. The Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber for RKU, Lieutenant General Kitzinger, later reported in Dec.  that the death rate for POWs was , daily. This increased
in Dec. to , deaths per day. See Streit, Keine Kameraden, .
 Rosenberg, ‘‘Vermerk über Unterredung beim Führer am  Dec. ,’’ NA, RG
, PS-.
 See report of the Sixth Army, ‘‘Befehl zur Bildung von ukrainischen Arbeitskompanien,’’  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
 Berkhoff, ‘‘The ‘Russian’ Prisoners of War in Nazi-Ruled Ukraine,’’ .
 Holos Volyni,  July , from a Soviet war crimes investigation of Zhytomyr, reprinted in Klee and Dressen, Gott mit Uns, . The Bogun’ia incident is detailed
in a Soviet Ukrainian study of the occupation, Zhytomyrshchyna v period, –, –
. On the Zviahel experiment, see interrogation of August Häfner,  July ,
and interrogation of Ernst W. Boernecke,  Nov. , Trial of Kuno Callsen, BAL,
 AR-Z /. See Gerhart Panning, ‘‘Wirkungsform und Nachweis der sowjetischen Infantriesprengmunition,’’ Der deutsche Militärarzt, Jan. , Library of Congress, microfilm . Panning later returned to the region in July  as part of
a forensics commission that examined the disinterred bodies of victims of Stalin’s
purges in Vinnytsia. Herber, Gerichtsmedizin unterm Hakenkreuz, –.
 The latest figures for prisoners killed in the Zhytomyr oblast alone (covering about
half of the German Commissariat’s population) vary between ,, and ,;
that more than , were killed was determined by a  memorial commission in Zhytomyr. See Stryvozhena pam’iat’, , .
 On the Berdychiv camp’s mortality rates in Dec. , see report of Rear Army Area
South,  Dec. , NMT, NOKW-. A year later this camp, a former Russian
barracks, still housed some maimed POWs, about eighty, who were executed by
the local SD commandos under the command of SS Hauptsturmführer Kallbach
and SS Commander Fritz Knop; see Case no.  (Hülsdünker and Knop), Justiz
und NS-Verbrechen, vol. . Records of Berdychiv’s Sipo-SD office on this massacre
Notes to Pages 63–65









are also in IMT, USSR-. Postwar Soviet investigators discovered in Berdychiv’s
Krasnaia Gora (= Red Mountain) four mass graves containing , bodies with
their hands and feet tied and their skulls shattered either by a gunshot or a blunt
instrument. On the , POWs shot by the SD at Krasnaia Gora, see testimony of
Michail Pekelis, Case against Friedrich Becker, SD Office of Berdychiv, BAL, 
AR-Z /, vol. , , and vol. , , .
See the  Nov.  report from the chief armaments inspector in Ukraine, which
criticized the massacres of Jews and POWs as a loss of skilled labor. IMT, NA, RG
, PS-. The conflicts over POW policy in the summer and fall of  are described more extensively in Streit, Keine Kameraden, .
See Seventeenth Army headquarters order of  July , NA, RG , T-/R
/; Hitler objected to the release of Ukrainians. Koch later blamed the
military for creating the partisan movement with the release of POWs; IMT, NA, RG
, -PS. The threat of disease was also an argument made against the release.
By early Oct. the release of Ukrainian POWs was forbidden; see Division Orders,
KTB SD Anlage, NA, RG , T-/R /.
Dallin, German Rule in Russia, . Berkhoff, ‘‘The ‘Russian’ Prisoners of War,’’ .
Order of AOK ,  July , NA, RG , T-/R /–. Formation
of the Ukrainian police instructions in KTB SD Anlage, NA, RG , T-/
R/– and T-/R /–. See Divisionsbefehl, ‘‘Entlassung
von Kriegsgefangenen,’’  Sept. , KTB SD, T-/R /, and Quarter Master instructions, Befh. Rückw.H.Geb.Süd., according to OKH orders on release of POWs, dated  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
Figure cited from Garrard and Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev, –. I am grateful
to the authors for sending me a copy of the German document, OKH General Staff
report on POWs dated  Feb. . This report also reveals that in Jan. , in
the POW camps under Army Group South, a total of , POWs perished or were
shot. Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg, WiID/, .
The large number of Ukrainians released, a figure that was tabulated by a Wehrmacht agency, is also a bit misleading because on the records the Germans used
the term ‘‘released’’ when a large number of them were seized outside the camps.
For example, in Berdychiv, when the formal order to release certain POWs, such
as Ukrainians, was publicized near Berdychiv, the commandant of the Dulag also
received a verbal order that released prisoners who were found wandering on the
roads should be returned to the camp. Apparently many POWs had used false identifications, and members of Orpo Battalion  were sent out on patrols to reinvestigate the identity of these prisoners. See SD orders to local Dulag and Stalag
chiefs, – Sept. , KTB SD, NA, RG , T-/R /–.
See BdO [Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei] Tagesbefehl,  Feb. , reprinted
in the RKU ‘‘Amtliche Mitteilungen,’’ Feb.  issue, p. , in CSA, Kiev, --,
microfilm held at USHMM, RG.M, reel .
Heydrich Operational Order No. ,  July  ( copies were distributed to
 Notes to Pages 65–66









SS-police and military leadership). Reprinted in NMT, High Command Case XII,
vol. , .
See N. Müller, Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik, document #. Arad, Krakowski,
and Spector, eds., The Einsatzgruppen Reports,  Nov. , –, –; and Reichenau memo of  Oct. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
See Jan Philipp Reemtsma, ‘‘The Concept of the War of Annihilation: Clausewitz,
Ludendorff, Hitler,’’ in War of Extermination, ed. Heer and Naumann, –; Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, –. On World War I, see Horne and Kramer, German
Atrocities, , –.
Isabel V. Hull, ‘‘Military Culture and the Production of ‘Final Solutions’ in the Colonies,’’ in The Specter of Genocide, ed. Gellately and Kiernan, –.
Bartov, The Eastern Front, – and Hitler’s Army. Earlier work—first by prosecutors in the NMT High Command Case XII and then by German historians (for example, Streit, Jacobsen, Krausnick, Messerschmidt, and Förster)—elucidated the
crimes and ideological disposition of the Wehrmacht. Wehrmacht crimes continue
to be the topic of public demonstrations and conflicts in Germany today; see Heer
and Naumann, eds., War of Extermination.
Schulte, The German Army, –.
Chapter Four
The quotation used as the epigraph is from an interview by the author,  May .
Iurii Alekseevich Kiian was born in Ljubar,  Apr. . In  he was deported to
Leipzig as an Ostarbeiter and worked in an armaments factory.
Dieter Pohl, ‘‘The Murder of Ukraine’s Jews under German Military Administration
and in the Reich Commissariat Ukraine,’’ in The Shoah in Ukraine, ed. R. Brandon
and W. Lower (forthcoming).
General Commissariat ‘‘Lagebericht,’’ Judenfrage,  June , Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R/, p. .
Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien, and ‘‘Schauplatz Ukraine: Der
Massenmord an den Juden im Militärverwaltungsgebiet und im Reichskommissariat –,’’ in Ausbeutung, Vernichtung, Öffentlichkeit, ed. Frei, –. Angrick,
Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord; Dean, ‘‘The German Gendarmerie, the Ukrainian
Schutzmannschaft, and the ‘Second Wave’ of Jewish Killings in Occupied Ukraine,’’
–; Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust; Penter, ‘‘Die Lokale Gesellschaft im
Donbass unter deutscher Okkupation,’’ –.
See Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, –. More recent regional studies
follow Browning’s basic argument that two fundamental decisions were made
sometime between late July and mid-Dec. , one against Soviet Jewry and the
other against all of European Jewry. See Herbert, ed., National Socialist Extermination
Policies. For a contrasting view of the evolution of the policy that stresses the leadership’s clear intentions as of early , see Breitman’s The Architect of Genocide. On
‘‘Ostrausch,’’ see Harvey, Women and the Nazi East, .
Notes to Pages 66–71

 On Tannenberg, see Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland.
 On the importance of Jeckeln’s units, see Büchler, ‘‘Kommandostab ReichsführerSS,’’ –, and Breitman, Official Secrets, –.
 Affidavit of Erwin Schulz,  May , NMT, NO-, reprinted in vol. , –
. Among the oldest within the Einsatzkommando leadership, Schulz was born
in , joined the Schutzpolizei in , and then switched to political intelligence work in the SD in . After Mar. , he helped establish Gestapo offices
in Austria and became the inspector of the Sipo-SD in the Sudetenland. He was a
staunch anticommunist who participated in the crushing of Spartacist revolt and
also joined the Freikorps. See Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, –.
 Consee statement of  Sept. , Trial of Kuno Callsen et al., BAL,  AR-Z
/.
 See Witte et al., eds. Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers, ; Commander of the
Order Police in Ukraine, Otto von Oelhafen testimony, Nuremberg, May , NA,
RG , roll , m.
 Longerich, The Unwritten Order.
 In The Destruction of the European Jews, Hilberg introduced the significant role of
the Orpo, and current scholarship has greatly expanded on his work by showing that they carried out the larger ‘‘cleansing’’ actions. On the role of Orpo in
Barbarossa, see Breitman, Official Secrets, –; Also see Westermann, ‘‘‘Ordinary
Men’ or ‘Ideological Soldiers,’ ’’ –, and Matthäus, ‘‘What about the ‘Ordinary
Men’?,’’ –.
 The subunits of the SK and EK units were of platoon size—about twenty-five men.
Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges, –; Ogorreck, Die
Einsatzgruppen.
 Viktor Trill, statement of  June  and of  June , Callsen Trial, BAL, 
AR-Z /. Trill was one of the drivers of the three vehicles in the Vorkommando.
The executions, explained as retaliation for arson, are reported in Ukraïns’ke Slovo,
(Zhytomyr),  July , ZSA, Newspaper Collection. These killings were also recorded in the Ereignismeldungen of  July  and of  July ; see Arad,
Krawkowski, and Spector, eds., The Einsatzgruppen Reports, .
 Ereignismeldung,  Oct. , NA, RG , T-, R /–. On the conversion of the ghetto into a prison/labor camp, see the statement of the former
adjutant to Zhytomyr’s commander of the Order Police, Karl Kietzmann,  Sept.
, BAL,  AR-Z /, .
 According to a German Sipo-SD report, there were about , Jews in and around
Zhytomyr before the occupation, and more than , in Zhytomyr proper prior
to June . Between  and  percent of the urban Jewish population of central and eastern Ukraine fled eastward; but the rural population remained trapped
in towns and villages where there was little access to railways and transport. The
Ereignismeldung of  July  shows a figure of , Jews in the city of Zhytomyr; Arad, Krawkowski, and Spector, eds., The Einsatzgruppen Reports, . According
 Notes to Pages 71–74








to the local paper at that time, Zhytomyr’s population was ,, including ,
Jews; Ukraïns’ke Slovo (Zhytomyr),  Sept. , ZSA, Newspaper Collection. Also
see population surveys of the region from the Abteilung Statistik, Zhytomyr Commissariat, ZSA, Pc-c-. The various postwar commissions’ figures of Jewish
dead differ dramatically. In the six mass graves outside the city, there were ,
victims, many of them in civilian clothing and children. See Benz and Langenheim,
Mordfelder, –.
Himmler transferred Jeckeln to Ostland at the end of Oct.  to carry out the
‘‘Final Solution’’ there; apparently Jeckeln’s replacement, HSSPF Prützmann, was
on better terms with Reich Commissar Erich Koch. On Jeckeln, see Breitman, Offical Secrets, –, and ‘‘Friedrich Jeckeln: Spezialist für die ‘Endlösung’ im Osten,’’
in Die SS, ed. Smelser and Syring, –. Also see Birn, Die Höheren SS und Polizeiführer, . The Soviets tried and hanged Jeckeln in the ruins of the Riga ghetto.
See Jeckeln’s Einsatzbefehl of  July  for Novohrad-Volyns’kyi, NA, RG ,
T-/R /–, and Unsere Ehre Heisst Treue, –. Some , Jews died in
the July–Aug. massacres.
In addition to the Einsatzgruppe C reports, see testimony of Hans Wilhelm Isenmann, member of SS-Viking, in USHMM, RG .. Kiev, records of the former
KGB.
It is possible that  Jews were killed during the ghetto action; one source states
that the staff police units of the HSSPF were responsible for this massacre on
 Aug. . German Police Decodes, ZIP G.P.D. ,  Aug. – Sept.
, NA, RG , Box . This brief description of the ghetto is in Ehrenburg
and Grossman, eds., The Black Book, . Also see testimonies and segments of the
Extraordinary Commission Report in Elisavetskii, Berdichevskaia tragediia, –. I
am grateful to Asya Vaisman for assisting with the Russian translations. Also see
Garrard and Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev, –.
German Police Decodes, ZIP/MSGP.,  Aug.  and  Sept. ; also for
the period – Aug., see p. , ‘‘Executions.’’ NA, RG , Box . Order Police
Battalions  and  were assigned to the Berdychiv and Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
actions along with EK. ‘‘Abschlussbericht’’ Case against Friedrich Becker, Schupo
[Schutzpolizei] Berdychiv, BAL,  AR-Z /, .
Ehrenburg and Grossman, eds., The Black Book, .
Statement of Oelhafen,  May . After meeting with Jeckeln, Oelhafen returned
to Germany to organize his staff, which was headquartered in Kiev. Koch had
asked Oelhafen to make Rivne ‘‘judenfrei’’ before his arrival; when asked about this
action after the war Oelhafen told Nuremberg interrogators that ‘‘Rivne, das war
ein kleines Nest, –.’’ Actually the number of Jews killed was ,. Oelhafen commanded Orpo regiments  and . He was BdO Ukraine from  Sept.
 to Sept. . He was interrogated at Nuremberg on  May  and  May
; NA, RG , roll , m.
Jeckeln may have been referring to a number of actions, either in Berdychiv itself
Notes to Pages 76–77











or around the city to the north and south. Most likely he was ‘‘boasting’’ about the
largest actions thus far by his units, mostly by Orpo Battalion  in and around
Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi. See Richard Breitman, Official Secrets, .
German Police Decodes,  Aug. ; ZIP/MSGP.,  Aug. and  Sept. ;
also see the period – Aug., p. , ‘‘Executions.’’ NA, RG , Box . An SD
commando and two Ukrainian policemen, Zelinskii and Mashkovskii, are identified in the Soviet account of this action; see Soviet witness statements, Case against
Friedrich Becker, ‘‘Untersuchungsbericht,’’ BAL,  AR-Z /, . Also see
Ehrenburg and Grossman, eds., The Black Book, –. Members of Orpo Battalion
, Company , may have also been involved. See testimonies of former battalion members Walter Bostelmann and Walter Bötel, Callsen Trial, BAL,  AR-Z
/.
Ehrenburg and Grossman, eds., The Black Book, .
Kommandostab RFSS files, MHI, Prague, carton , microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.m, reel ; also see Unsere Ehre Heisst Treue, –, –.
German Police Decodes, nos. – for the period – Sept. ; ZIP/MSGP./
//, p. . NA, RG , Box .
Thanks to Wolfgang Seibel and Gerald Feldman for bringing the ‘‘Division of Labor’’ theme to my attention. See Feldman and Seibel, eds., Networks of Nazi Persecution. Information was exchanged between Jeckeln’s and Rasch’s headquarters, but
there is little documentation about how they coordinated their actions. Einsatzgruppen rarely reported on HSSPF actions; in one unusual instance EGC reported
on  Sept.  that ‘‘in Kamenez Podoliia in three days , Jews were shot by
one commando of HSSPF.’’ NA, RG , T-/R /.
Negotiations between the army and the SD began in Mar. , but were finalized
at the end of May between Heydrich and Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner.
See Breitman, The Architect of Genocide, –, and Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, . Heer and Naumann, eds., War of Extermination.
This particular period was the heyday of army-SS cooperation in anti-Jewish actions. Jeckeln had the previous day temporarily given over his command of the
First SS Brigade (IR /) to Sixth Army general Reichenau. See Unsere Ehre Heisst
Treue, .
Though these two may have been connected to the Soviet trial system, the German
accusations, which were meant to stir up anti-Semitism, were outrageous. They
claimed that ‘‘as Jews’’ Kieper and Kogan were to blame for the famine and deaths
of  million Ukrainians. See Ereignismeldung of  Aug. , in Arad, Krawkowski, and Spector, eds., The Einsatzgruppen Reports, –. Statement of J. A. Bauer,
 Aug. , Callsen Trial, BAL,  AR-Z /.
According to the statement of J. A. Bauer, driver of Paul Blobel, the commander of
SKa, the newsreel outfit Wochenschau was present at the executions. Statement of
 Jan. , Callsen Trial, BAL,  AR-Z /.
See eyewitness statements from a postwar trial of a former Wehrmacht soldier,
 Notes to Pages 77–79













P.A., Landeskriminalamt Nordrhein-Westfalen,  Feb.  and  Jan. . This
statement, photographs, and an essay on the crimes of the Sixth Army are presented by Bernd Boll and Hans Safrian in ‘‘Auf dem Weg nach Stalingrad: Die .
Armee /,’’ printed in the exhibit catalog Vernichtungskrieg, ed. Heer and Naumann, –.
Some army personnel may have also carried out the shootings. Statement of Kuno
Callsen,  June , Callsen Trial, BAL,  AR-Z /. The Callsen judgment is
also found in Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges, . This
event is also recounted in Klee, Dressen, and Riess, eds., The Good Old Days, –.
See statement of August Häfner of SKa,  June . Häfner also claimed that the
Wehrmacht soldiers clubbed the Jews who were awaiting execution, so that when
they arrived at the pit, they were covered in blood. Callsen Trial.
See Ernst Wilhelm Boernecke statement of  Nov. , Callsen Trial, BAL, 
AR-Z /. According to one account, the brains of the victims were spraying the
shooters, one of whom, a person from SKa named Janssen, returned to the Reich
for treatment of a skin rash on his face. Statement of August Häfner,  June ,
Callsen Trial, BAL,  AR-Z /.
Statement of Kurt Friedrich Hans,  Sept. , Teilkommandoführer SKa, Callsen Trial, BAL,  AR-Z /.
See Gerhart Panning, ‘‘Wirkungsform und Nachweis der sowjetischen Infanteriesprengmunition,’’ Jan. , Der deutsche Militärarzt, Library of Congress, microfilm
. Panning died in Mar. . See Moltke’s letter reprinted in Ruhm von Oppen,
ed., Letters to Freya, –, . Also see Streim, Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener, –. Panning’s contribution to Nazi ‘‘crime fighting’’ is detailed in
Herber, Gerichtsmedizin unterm Hakenkreuz, –.
See Hans Mommsen, ‘‘Preussentum und Nationalsozialismus,’’ in Benz, Buchheim, and Mommsen, eds., Der Nationalsozialismus, –. Blobel’s personnel file is
reprinted in Friedlander and Milton, eds., Archives of the Holocaust , .
The more routine army-SD collaboration is illustrated in the actions that occurred
in Berdychiv before HSSPF Jeckeln arrived and dominated the scene. See Ehrenburg
and Grossman, eds., The Black Book, . Also see ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Case against
Friedrich Becker, BAL,  AR-Z /.
Ehrenburg and Grossman, eds., The Black Book, .
Umanskij, Jüdisches Glück, –.
Einsatzgruppe C Ereignismeldung, Sept. , , USHMM Acc. .A. (also
available at NA, RG , T-, R, frame ).
SS Personnel file of Emil Otto Rasch, NA, RG , Berlin Document Center Records, A SSO-B, –. Also see Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, .
See Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, –, and Matthäus, Kwiet, Förster,
and Breitman, Ausbildungsziel Judenmord?, .
See Peter Black, ‘‘Arthur Nebe: Nationalsozialist im Zwielicht,’’ in Die SS, ed. Smelser and Syring, –.
Notes to Pages 79–85

 On Rasch, see Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges; Headland, Messages of Murder; and the entry on Otto Rasch by Shmuel Spector in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, ed. Gutman, :.
 Heinrich Huhn statement of  Oct. , Callsen Trial, BAL,  AR-Z /.
 (FK ) records from Aug. , RGVA, --, held at USHMM, RG
.M., reel .
 The translation stems from Rosenberg’s marked-up version. The original typewritten text included this statement (which was crossed out): ‘‘Insofar as the Jews have
not been driven out by the Ukrainians themselves, the small communities must be
placed in large camps and forced to work, like the practice already being carried
out in Lodz.’’ NA, RG , IMT, Doc. -PS, –.
 Mikhail Alekseevich Rozenberg, interview by Kira Burova,  Apr. , Office of
Jewish Affairs and Emigration, Zhytomyr Oblast, Ukraine. The Nazi population
survey of Romanov, under Chudniv, shows, under the category of ‘‘other’’ for ethnic group and religion, between  and , persons. Abteilung Statistik, ZSA,
P--. Nina Borisovna Glozman, interview by Kira Burova,  Feb. , Office
of Jewish Affairs and Emigration, Zhytomyr Oblast, Ukraine. Glozman was from a
village near Koziatyn (Bilopil’e); she was unable to evacuate because there was no
access to the railroad in the village. See Mordechai Altshuler, ‘‘Escape and Evacuation of Soviet Jews at the Time of the Nazi Invasion,’’ in The Holocaust in the Soviet
Union, ed. Dobroszycki and Gurock, –.
 Goykher, The Tragedy of the Letichev Ghetto, . General Commissar Klemm’s ‘‘Lagebericht’’ of June  stated that  Jews were killed in Illintsi in May ,
Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R/, p. .
 Ereignismeldung,  Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R/–, and Ereignismeldung,  Sept. , in The Einsatzgruppen Reports, ed. Arad, Krakowski, and
Spector, .
 Statement of Josef Quante,  May , Case against Franz Razesberger, BAL, 
AR-Z /, Band II, .
 Roques order,  Aug. , KTB Commander of the Occupied Rear Army South,
NA, RG , T-/R /. This was in accordance with an earlier OKH order
of  Aug. , NA, RG , T, roll /.
 RKU ‘‘Instructions,’’  Sept. , ZSA, P--.
 The German SD oversaw the action, but instructions came from the Ukrainian
mayor. This area was later situated outside the borders of the Zhytomyr General
Commissariat. Vinnytsia State Archive, -c-, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel .
 ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Case against Herbert Sittig, Gebietskommissar of Nemyriv,
BAL, II a AR-Z /, –.
 Ehrenburg and Grossman, eds., The Black Book, –.
 This pattern is described in several testimonies from SKa members. For Cherniakhiv, see statement of Friedrich Wilhelm Ebeling,  Aug. , Callsen Trial,
 Notes to Pages 85–88









BAL,  AR-Z /. For Radomyshl’, see statement of Ernst Wilhelm Börnecke,
 Mar. , Callsen Trial, BAL,  AR-Z /. Also in Vinnytsia, a survivor
wrote that the Jews were concentrated in a factory; see Israel Weiner letter,  May
, USHMM, RG ... In the interview conducted by Burova ( Apr. ),
Rozenberg stated that in Dzerzhyns’k ‘‘we were crammed into one building.’’ At
Koziatyn the Jews were confined to an area that was described as both a ghetto
and a labor camp; see Burova interview of Glozman,  Feb. . Koziatyn’s Jews
were placed in army barracks outside of town, not a ghetto; see file on the Koziatyn
camp from Oct. , ZSA, P--.
On the curfews and other restrictions as well as Koch’s  Aug.  memo on
ghettoization, see ZSA, P--a. The restrictions are also described by a survivor in Umanskij, Jüdisches Glück, –. Spector’s analysis of ghettoization is in
The Holocaust of Volhynian Jews, –.
Plans for deporting German, Austrian, and Czech Jews to the East, where they
would be killed, emerged earlier at the end of Sept. and in Oct. . See Aly, Endlösung, –, –.
See the joint memo from Koch and Prützmann to the Generalkommissare, BdO,
BdS, and SSPF. They asked that the information about remaining Jews, their locale,
and accessible train routes for Reich Jews be provided by  Mar. . Memo dated
 Jan. , ZSA, P--, p. .
Landesschützenverbände (defense units) were also brought in to support the ‘‘pacification’’ campaign behind the lines; in Zhytomyr these included: L.S. Btl. ; ;
;  and L.S. Rgt. . In Jan.  at Khmil’nyk, L.S. Btl.  was active in
massacres, and some members of the battalion volunteered to serve as shooters in
the action. ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Investigation of Gebietskommissariat Litin (Vollkammer et al.), BAL, II a AR-Z /, –.
Ereignismeldung,  Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
John Paul Himka, ‘‘Ukrainian Collaboration in the Extermination of the Jews during the Second World War: Sorting Out the Long-Term and Conjunctural Factors,’’
in The Fate of the European Jews, ed. Frankel, .
Breitman, ‘‘Himmler’s Police Auxiliaries in the Occupied Soviet Territories,’’ –.
Himmler specified that these auxiliaries would also be used in mobile battalions
outside their native countries, thus Lithuanians (battalion  stationed in Korosten’) and Latvians (battalion  stationed at Ovruch) were active in the Zhytomyr region in –. NA, RG , T-/R /. On the army formation
of Ukrainian Hilfspolizei and militia groups, see  July  order, NA, RG ,
T-/R /–; and  Sept.  order, NA, RG , T-/R /–
. Another account, though propagandistic, on the formation of Ukrainian auxiliaries is available in Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung (Luts’k),  Oct. , Library of Congress, newspaper microfilm .
Orders of Ukrainian elders and militia commanders, July–Sept. , Vinnytsia
State Archive, -c-, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
Notes to Pages 89–91

 See Ereignismeldung,  Sept. , in The Einsatzgruppen Reports, ed. Arad, Krakowski, and Spector, .
 Burova interview of Glozman,  Feb. .
 Viktor Trill, statement of  June , Callsen Trial, BAL,  AR-Z /.
 Galina Efimovna Pekerman, interview by Kira Burova,  May , Office of Jewish Affairs and Emigration, Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Pekerman (b. ) is one of three
Jewish survivors from Chudniv. After crawling out of the mass grave, she roamed
the forests for several months begging for food with another small group of Jewish survivors; they went to Berdychiv (late winter –); she pretended to be a
Ukrainian orphan and was later sent as a forced laborer in a transport of Ukrainians to Auschwitz. She stayed in the Ukrainian barracks, worked in a cement factory
and was liberated by the Soviets there. In her account of mass shootings in Chudniv, she described three German police officers who stood near the pits while the
Ukrainian police did the shooting.
 German commissioner Stumpp wrote that, west of the Zhytomyr Commissariat in
Luts’k, a Ukrainian woman approached him and whispered in his ear that the Germans should get rid of the Jews, whom she described as ‘‘an evil pagan people.’’
Stumpp, Aug.  report on his travels from L’viv to Zhytomyr, NA, RG ,
T-/R /–.
 See announcement of arrests of Ukrainian police who plundered Jewish homes in
Holos Volyni (Zhytomyr),  Oct. , ZSA, Newspaper Collection.
 The SD routine of using local village chiefs and militia is described in part in Einsatzgruppe C report,  Aug. , NA, RG , T-//–. The district commissars used the local Ukrainian mayors and district chiefs to register the
population, implement taxes, relocate Jews to camps and ghettos, and so forth.
Anti-Jewish ‘‘administrative’’ measures were outlined in the commissars’ ‘‘Amtliche Mitteilungen,’’ beginning with taxes against Jews.  Nov. , RKU Mitteilungen nr. , CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M,
reel .
 Burova interview of Glozman,  Feb. .
 See Ereignismeldung,  Sept. , in The Einsatzgruppen Reports, ed. Arad, Krakowski, and Spector, ; RMfdbO reports and VoMi reports about the anti-Jewish attitude of ethnic Germans and Ukrainians, NA, RG , T-/R /–; CSA,
Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reels , .
 Sherei was from Chernivtsi, Soviet-occupied Romania. At the beginning of Sept.
, he and  other men were sent to Zhytomyr. Sherei stated that their relocation was ordered by the SD, and under SS Untersturmführer Schlosser of EK they
were formed into police units of  men to be dispersed in the major towns and
cities of German-occupied Ukraine; the Kiev unit stayed in Berdychiv until Kiev
fell to the Germans. Koval’s’kyi SD investigation of  Dec. , ZSA, P--.
On the German secret police transfer of Ukrainians in Romania who were being
 Notes to Pages 91–94










persecuted there to German-occupied Ukraine, see Arad, Krakowski, and Spector,
eds., The Einsatzgruppen Reports,  (Ereignismeldung,  July  report).
One of the issues that was being investigated was the ownership of a Jewish leather
coat that was valued at , rubles. Martha Arndt, an ethnic German, found it
when she occupied a former Jewish apartment at Moskaustrasse #;  Dec. ,
ZSA, P--.
Kulitzki was born in Kiev, but his family was from Königsberg. His relatives held
similar positions—an ethnic German brother was an SD chief at Litzmannstadt;
a cousin was Untersturmführer in VoMi Zhytomyr; and two of his brothers-in-law
were in the Wehrmacht. ZSA, P--.
Glozman described a Ukrainian who guarded the Jews in Koziatyn; at night, when
the Germans were not around, he tortured the Jews. Later she was betrayed by an
ethnic German interpreter who had been a classmate. Burova interview of Glozman,  Feb. .
On the Soviet and Jewish accounts that brand nationalists as collaborators, see Zvi
Gitelman, ‘‘Politics and the Historiography of the Soviet Union,’’ in Bitter Legacy,
ed. Gitelman.
Berkhoff and Carynnyk, ‘‘The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists,’’ .
Ibid., .
For one of the few scholarly treatments of this topic, see Potichnyi and Aster, eds.,
Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, in particular the essay in this volume by Altshuler, ‘‘Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in the Soviet Milieu in the Interwar
Period,’’ –. I will examine the Ukrainian nationalist factions (OUN-B and
OUN-M) and their activities in Zhytomyr in more depth in chapter  and chapter .
ZSA, Pc--. During the OUN’s Apr.  Congress, one resolution was put
forth that the OUN ‘‘combat the Jews as the prop of the Muscovite-Bolshevik regime.’’ The Nazis viewed the Jews as a racial menace and the source of Bolshevism, whereas the OUN leaders in Cracow defined their anti-Semitism along political, not racial, lines. This distinction is misrepresented in Taras Hunczak’s essay
‘‘Ukrainian-Jewish Relations during the Soviet and Nazi Occupations,’’ in Ukraine
during World War II, ed. Boshyk, ; Hunczak states that neither the Ukrainian underground movement ‘‘nor any other organizations thus cultivated anti-Semitic programs or policies.’’
On the Khmil’nyk liquidations, see the Abschlussbericht, BAL, II  AR-Z, /,
–.
One of the two survivors of Dzerzhyns’k, where the Germans destroyed a population of , Jews, described his ordeal of hiding in old barns and roaming villages in search of food and shelter; Burova interview of Rozenberg,  Apr. .
Nina Borisovna Glozman also told of her hiding in old barns, abandoned houses,
and factories; Burova interview of Glozman,  Feb. . Eva Abramovna Frankel
walked hundreds of kilometers and had to beg for food and shelter in villages
Notes to Pages 94–96

around Berdychiv; Burova interview of Frankel,  Feb. . Vladimir Goykher
wrote of similar experiences in his memoir, The Tragedy of the Letichev Ghetto.
 Statement of Karl Kietzmann,  Sept. , Case against Kohlmorgen, BAL, 
AR-Z /. There were also about  Jewish laborers who were held in a camp
just outside the city in Apr. . Over the next months the Germans brought
in hundreds more from Volhynia and Galicia and kept them temporarily in a few
buildings on Mikhailovskaia Street until they brought them to their final destination, the pits of Bogun’ia. Testimony of Josef Kwjatowski (who worked in the
kitchen on Mikhailovskaia Street, Zhytomyr), Case against Franz Razesberger, BAL,
 AR-Z /, Band I, . On the removal of Jews from Wehrmacht offices, see Keitel order ‘‘Juden in den besetzten Ostgebiete,’’  Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R
/. Jews in Zhytomyr were employed by the Sixth Army in the printing
shop where they were ‘‘allegedly’’ able to forge documents. Einsatzgruppe C report,  Sept. , in The Einsatzgruppen Reports, ed., Arad, Krakowski, and Spector,
.
 The small slice of the Zhytomyr region that was included in the Hitler order of
 Aug. lay west of Novohrad-Volyns’kyi. See war diary entry of  Aug. , KTB
SD, NA, RG , T-/R /, and Commander of Rear Area South
to OKH General Staff, ‘‘Übergabe an die Zivilverwaltung d. Reichskommissare,’’
 Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R /. The complete transfer of the region
to civilian authority under General Commissar of Zhytomyr Kurt Klemm occurred
on  Oct. , when the RKU was expanded to the Dnepr (East) and the Bug
(South); this was according to a Hitler decree of  Oct. , NA, RG , T-/R
/– and T-/R /. Continued military administration was
placed under Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber for Ukraine Kitzinger, who was stationed
in the RKU capital, Rivne; the army commandants who focused on the passage
of troops, POWs, and supplies across the region to and from the front were also
drawn into civilian occupation policies. Military Field Commander  arrived in
Zhytomyr on  Oct. ; NA, RG , T-/R /.
 His ruling style continued in the manner of Stülpnagel and others in the Sixth and
Seventeenth Army leadership. In one of Kitzinger’s inaugural decrees as Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber for Ukraine, he demanded that collective reprisals target local
Jews and that the indigenous mayor serve as the German’s ‘‘front man’’ by publicly ordering the shootings of civilians. Kitzinger order of  Oct. , CSA, Kiev,
--, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
Chapter Five
 Bormann Meeting Notes, -L, IMT, vol. , –. Also reprinted in N. Müller,
Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik, –.
 Bormann Meeting Notes, -L, IMT, vol. , –.
 Ibid.
 Rosenberg had been forming a staff of eastern experts since early Apr. On  Apr.
 Notes to Pages 96–99









, Hitler officially appointed Rosenberg the central authority on the East; see
IMT, NA, RG , -PS. Himmler and Heydrich had also planned since early 
to lead the police and security operations of the occupied East, placing the Einsatzgruppen and higher SS and police leaders’ units (including Order Police) within
the army areas and civilian zones. On Himmler’s planning for the war in the East,
see Breitman, The Architect of Genocide.
‘‘Die Zivilverwaltung in den besetzten Ostgebieten, Teil II: Reichskommissariat
Ukraine,’’ ‘‘Brown File,’’ RGVA, --, p. . I am grateful to Jürgen Matthäus for providing me with a copy of this document.
The ‘‘Generalbezirk Zhitomir’’ as a geographic construct was a German creation,
whose borders included the former Soviet oblast of Zhytomyr and parts of Vinnytsia (in the South bordering Romania along the Bug River); Polissia (the northern
border of Belorussia including a southern section of the Pripiat’ marshlands); and
Gomel’ (the northeast corner). See the overview ‘‘Der Generalbezirk Shytomyr,’’
 Mar. , RMfdbO, ZSA, P--.
In Feb. , however, three of the twenty-five districts were still lacking a commissar: Lel’chytsi, Komaryn, and Monastyryshche. CSA, Kiev, microfilm at USHMM,
RG .M, reel , –.
See report by the General Commissar on the structure of the administration, ZSA,
P--. Also see description of district commissars’ offices in Abschlussbericht, Investigation of Zhytomyr district commissars, BAL, ZSL II a AR-Z
/, and Case against Friedrich Becker, Schupo Berdychiv, BAL, II a AR-Z
/, Band IV.
These figures are based on the composition of the Koziatyn district police, the
Zhytomyr city police, and the Ruzhyn district police; ZSA, P--, P--,
and P--. Four Gendarmerie Hauptmannschaften, a group of about  rural or
county troopers, were assigned to the region by mid- to support and manage the stationary gendarmerie units around Berdychiv, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, and
Mazyr. The German police in the urban centers of Berdychiv, Vinnytsia, and Zhytomyr were not gendarmes, but rather municipal police, or Schutzpolizei, who were
supported by Ukrainian police aides, or Hilfspolizei.
‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Koziatyn Case, BAL, a AR-Z /, Band II, . Thanks
to Martin Dean for the information on the Sipo-SD Aussenstellen, ZSA, --,
p. .
Hitler’s Table Talk, .
Ibid., .
Pavlovsky’s first name does not appear in the German accounts. The rest of the
committee consisted of an engineer from Vinnytsia named Bernard, a district chief
from Korostyshiv, a department leader from the district administration of Mazyr
named Miko, and a district medical adviser from Novohrad-Volyns’kyi named
Nievidovskii. Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung (Luts’k),  Feb. , Library of Congress,
newspaper microfilm .
Notes to Pages 101–5

 On the General Commissariat structure and placement of Ukrainian leaders as
raion leaders and village elders, see RKU decree of  Feb. . CSA, Kiev, -, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
 See the Jan Lazar order, from Tul’chyn,  Nov. : ‘‘Any mayors who do not comply with German orders or who issue false IDs will be treated as spies.’’ Vinnytsia
State Archive, P-c-, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
 General Commissar Klemm, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’ dated  June , Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R/.
 See IMT, NA, RG , NO-. See also the biased postwar account of Rosenberg’s
deputy, Bräutigam, Überblick über die besetzten Ostgebiete während des . Weltkrieges, ;
and the more balanced portrait by historian Jonathan Steinberg, ‘‘The Third Reich
Reflected,’’ .
 For the Klemm-Meyer correspondence, see ZSA, P--; regarding the credentials of staff and the Party quota, see ZSA, P-- and P--; for the meeting in Berlin, – Sept. , and staff appointments, see ZSA, P--.
 The other two castles were in Vogelsang and Sonthofen. See entries in Michael and
Doerr, Nazi-Deutsch.
 Klemm file, ZSA, P--; the commissars’ arrival is also described by Fritz
Margenfeld, the former city commissar for Vinnytsia. See statement of Margenfeld,
 Mar. , BAL, Sta Stuttgart  Js /, . Thanks to Konrad Kwiet and Jürgen
Matthäus for the Margenfeld material.
 See Klemm’s introductory memo to commissars,  Dec. , ZSA, P--.
 ‘‘Brown File,’’ RGVA, --, p. ; also found in Commissar Klemm file
, ZSA, P--a; and referenced by Dallin, German Rule in Russia, .
 ‘‘Brown File,’’ RGVA, --, p. . Also see General Commissar orders on
relations with local police, see Klemm order to commissars on administrative procedures,  Dec. , ZSA, P--, P--.
 On the initial line of authority and the establishment of SS and police courts, see
Klemm (briefing notes among Krössinsee material), ZSA, P--a; and Koch
memo of  Sept.  from Königsberg, CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG .M, reel .
 By mid-Dec.  it seems that Rosenberg was well aware of a decision to ‘‘exterminate’’ all Jews, at least those in the Soviet territories. None of Rosenberg’s earlier
writings from spring  indicates his knowledge of a decision. See Rosenberg’s
‘‘Vermerk über Unterredung beim Führer am  Dez. ,’’ IMT, NA, RG , PS.
 Rosenberg’s ‘‘guidelines’’ for the Jewish question in his ‘‘Brown File,’’ RGVA, -, p. .
 RMfdbO memo on the treatment of Ukrainians,  Nov. , ZSA, P--.
 Koch reiterated the ‘‘proper’’ use of the whip in an  Apr.  order and a memo
of  Nov.  to the general commissar of Zhytomyr, ‘‘Verhalten der deutschen
Bevölkerung gegenüber den Ukrainern,’’ ZSA, P--, p. . There were enough
 Notes to Pages 105–9












instances of such abuses that Alfred Meyer, Rosenberg’s deputy minister, issued
an order to Reich Commissar Lohse of the Ostland and Reich Commissar Koch of
Ukraine against the use of cudgels and whips;  Apr. , NA, RG , T-/R
/.
NSDAP report of – June  trip, NA, RG , T, roll , frames –
.
Descriptions and critiques of the commissariat with reference to carpetbaggers
and colonial agricultural economy in private German letters, NA, RG , T-/R
/folder ; and Reich Minister of Finance Krosigk critique of  Sept. ,
NA, RG , Box , NO-.
Berkhoff, ‘‘Hitler’s Clean Slate,’’ .
See Koch memo of  Nov. , ZSA, P--.
See Ukraine’s armaments inspector report of  Nov. , IMT, NA, RG , PS.
See order of Zhytomyr’s SS and police leader, Otto Hellwig, dated  Apr. , in
the postwar criminal investigation files against the district commissariats, Zhytomyr, Nemiriv district, BAL, a AR-Z /, document volume, –, . Hellwig (b. , Nordhausen) commanded Sipo cadets in the Polish invasion. Between
 and , he directed the Sipo leadership school. See Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, –, and Hellwig’s SS personnel file with Lebenslauf, in NA, RG , Berlin
Document Center Records, A SSO-A.
See order of  Feb.  that anyone caught mixing with locals will be sentenced
to death, ZSA, P--.
In Vinnytsia, the SD had reported in July  an increase of , cases of venereal disease, which the civil administration’s department of health tried to control.
Einsatzgruppe C report,  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /p. . See Zhytomyr
Department of Health memo on the city bordello and western European women,
 Jan. , and  Mar. , ZSA, P--.
Report of SA Oberführer Paul Theurer, RMfdbO Vertreter sent from Berlin to Zhytomyr to meet Klemm; he also described the Commissars’ club and entertainment
by ethnic German girls. See report of – Apr. , CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm at USHMM .M, reel .
As told by Hrihorii Denisenko, chief archivist, Zhytomyr State Archive, and WWII
veteran, who, during a walking tour of the city, pointed out the street corner where
her body was thrown from the car. Interview by author,  Aug. , Zhytomyr,
Ukraine. Also see Abschlussbericht, Becker Case, BAL,  AR-Z /, .
See SSPF Otto Hellwig’s ‘‘Bandenbekämpfung,’’  Jan. , ZSA, P--; mention of Ukrainian women as spies in report (not dated) of Koziatyn SSPF, ‘‘Erfahrungen im Bandenkampf,’’ ZSA, P--.
It is not clear in this report if the major offense was the shooting or his drunkenness; perhaps it was the combination. See General Commissar, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’
Mar. , ZSA, P--.
Notes to Pages 109–11

 Memo of the commissar’s labor office to the local army command,  July ,
ZSA, P--.
 For SD report, dated  Sept. , on illegal communications between Reich Germans, mainly German soldiers bringing letters to Ukrainians in Germany, see NA,
RG , T-/R /–.
 On orphans, see Heinemann, ‘‘Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut,’’ –.
 Bormann ordered Koch to seize Ukrainian prostitutes; see memo of  July ,
NA, RG , T-/R /–. Koch authorized the Gebietskommissar to
punish women and members of the local community if they tried to prevent abortions; see Koch’s instructions to his commissars,  Dec. , ZSA, P--.
Also see entry of  July , Hitler’s Table Talk, –.
 For the German restaurant in Zhytomyr, special German shops, the changing of
street names, and special German apartment districts, see City Commissar’s file,
ZSA, P--.
 Ivan Shynal’skii, interview by author,  May , ZSA, Ukraine.
 These were personal letters sent by Reich Germans who worked in Ukraine, which
were picked up by Reich censors and analyzed in –. NA, RG , T-/R
/ML , folder .
 SSPF Otto Hellwig order,  Sept. , ZSA, P--.
 German, Slovakian, and Hungarian troops in the city would trade their cigarettes,
beer, and vodka with the locals; the items were seized by the local police and
given to the German administration, which then sold the Ukrainian and German
goods to the Schutzmannschaften, described in report, ZSA, P--. This report refers to the  Jan.  Orpo memo about controlling the black market in
the city.
 Höpel’s letter and packages to his wife Emmy in Thüringen were intercepted by the
Abwehr in Berlin and forwarded to the SD in Berdychiv in Mar.–Apr. . ZSA,
P--.
 Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber, RKU situation report of  Nov.– Dec. , ZSA, P-.
 This order first appeared during the military occupation but was reissued by the
commissars; Holos Volyni (Zhytomyr),  Oct. , ZSA, Newspaper Collection.
 Rosenberg’s special staff of art plunderers, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg
(ERR), was also active in Zhytomyr. The city commissar of Zhytomyr Magass complained to Rosenberg’s ERR that he could not find enough boxes and materials to
pack up the art works from the local museum; City Commissar File,  May ,
ZSA, P--. In Berdychiv ERR officials found Balzac’s private collections in
the local library and sent them to Berlin. CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG .M, reel . See Grimsted, ‘‘Twice Plundered or ‘Twice Saved’?,’’
–.
 See the files of the city housing office, ZSA, P--; General Commissar memo
to Party officials regarding the securing of homes for Reich Germans,  June ,
 Notes to Pages 111–13


















ZSA, P--; and a Gebietskommissar letter about Jewish homes to be given
over to police, Illintsi,  July , ZSA, P--.
For example, the chief doctor at the German infirmary wrote to the commission
that he would like to purchase Jewish belongings, such as a piano and an armoire.
ZSA, P--.
 Dec. , ZSA, P--.
Mark Koval’s’kyi case,  Dec. , ZSA, P--.
RMfdbO, ‘‘Notes about Occupied Ukraine,’’  Oct. , NA, RG , T-/R
/.
Göllner inventory,  Feb. , ZSA, --.
On the variations in living conditions among commissars, see General Commissar
Leyser memo to district commissars of  Oct. , ZSA, P--.
See RMfdbO, ‘‘Notes about Occupied Ukraine,’’  Oct. , NA, RG , T-/R
/.
German officials who traveled in the region criticized the gendarmes about the
rough condition of their uniforms and about not properly greeting one another in
public with the official Nazi raised arm; numerous memos were circulated about
how to do the proper German greeting and the poor condition of German uniforms, which was an ironic concern for appearance and authority when their general conduct and behavior displayed the utmost depravity. See Commander of the
Gendarmerie files, ZSA, P--. Also in Leyser’s Mar.–Apr.  ‘‘Lagebericht,’’
ZSA, P--.
On the Müller case, see ZSA, P--.
Ukraïns’ke Slovo (Zhytomyr),  Sept. , ZSA, Newspaper Collection. The initial
army approach was also outlined in ‘‘Richtlinien zur Behandlung der Kollektivfrage,’’ Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd.,  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
‘‘German troops around Vinnytsia live off the land and suppress the attitude of the
farmers,’’  Aug. , NA, RG , DW files (German Foreign Office) box , file
no. .
Wedelstadt to Klemm,  Nov. , ZSA, P--.
ZSA, P--. On the announcement of the Landbaugenossenschaft at Zhytomyr, see Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung (Luts’k),  Sept. , p. , Library of Congress,
newspaper microfilm . On the Koch-Hitler approach to farms, see ‘‘Rede von
Koch,’’ – Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
On the  harvest, see Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber Kitzinger’s monthly report of
 June , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
WiStab Ost leader’s report,  Nov. . NA, RG , T-/R /.
Moshovskii Order, District Bazar,  Jan. , ZSA, P--.
See reports of the SS and police leader of Ruzhyn, in particular reports of  Sept.
 and  Feb.  and a Mar.  ‘‘Lagebericht.’’ ZSA, P--, P--.
Mulligan, The Politics of Illusion and Empire, ; Laskovsky, ‘‘Practicing Law in the
Occupied Ukraine,’’ –.
Notes to Pages 113–16

 RMfdbO trip report, ‘‘Aufzeichnungen über die Lage in der Ukraine,’’  Oct. :
‘‘The Gebietskommissar and the La-Führer are dictators here with the absolute
power . . . they rule arbitrarily.’’ NA, RG , T-/R /. See speech of
General Commissar Leyser’s deputy chief of agriculture for the Zhytomyr region to
Koch and Rosenberg, who visited Vinnytsia on  June . NA, RG , T-/R
/–.
 The La-Führer were selected by the military. Many were farmers in the Reich or
officials from agricultural offices; their credentials varied widely, but most were ill
prepared to manage the Ukrainian collectives and farms without having to resort
to terror tactics. See Dallin, German Rule in Russia, –; and Chiari, Alltag hinter
der Front, –.
 SS and police leader of Koziatyn memo to all gendarme posts and agricultural station leaders,  Aug. , ZSA, P--. The Ukrainian peasant Maria Atamanskaia, who worked in a collective farm in Chudniv, recalled that the Germans took
everything from the farm, but the actual seizures were conducted entirely by Ukrainian police. Maria Albinova Atamanskaia (b. ), interview by author,  May
, Zhytomyr, Ukraine.
 See General Commissar Zhytomyr, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’  June , Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R/.
 RMfdbO, ‘‘Notes about Occupied Ukraine,’’  Oct. , NA, RG , T-//
–/EAP/.
 Rosenberg, ‘‘Instruktion für einen Reichskommissar in der Ukraine,’’  May ,
IMT, NA, RG , -PS; Dallin, German Rule in Russia, –.
 For example, see report on Koziatyn youth camp (– years) in Ruzhyn, Aug. ,
ZSA, P--.
 Thomas order of  Aug. , recirculated in Zhytomyr,  Nov. , ZSA, P-. Behrens report from Koziatyn,  Nov. , ZSA, P--.
 In the city of Zhytomyr, Magass received monthly reports from Pintov, director of
the Ukrainian Club, which presented theater plays, operas, and choral concerts;
ZSA, P--.
 Göring enjoyed these performances of the Ukrainian theater and ballet and praised
the Ukrainian cultural productions as entertainment for the troops; trip report
of Economic Inspector, RKU Berlin,  Sept. , CSA, Kiev, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG .M, reel .
 On the joint Ukrainian-German theater productions in Vinnytsia and Haisyn, see
General Commissar Leyser, ‘‘Lagebericht’’ for Mar./Apr. , ZSA, P--.
 Case against Franz Razesberger, Abschlussbericht, BAL,  AR-Z /, .
 RMfdbO, ‘‘Aufzeichnungen über die Lage in der Ukraine,’’  Oct. , NA, RG
, T-/R /–.
 The Ukrainian Autocephalous Church was established in  during the civil war
and nationalist revolution. During the Stalinist purges of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (beginning with Lipovskii in –), the Ukrainian Autocephalous
 Notes to Pages 116–18











Church was effectively banned. The Moscow-centered Autonomous Orthodox
Church in Ukraine was systematically repressed through excessive taxation, revoking church building permits, mass arrests of church members, and the infiltration of the congregations by atheists. See Fireside, Icon and Swastika, .
Metropolitan Dionysius and Archbishop Polikarp are identified in the German report, ‘‘Aufzeichnungen über die Lage in der Ukraine,’’  Oct. , NA, RG ,
T-/R /. Also see Magocsi, History of Ukraine, , and Fireside, Icon and
Swastika, –.
The friction between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches became evident, to the Germans at least, in May ; the general commissar’s office described how both churches vied for popular support through leaflets, declarations,
and pastoral letters. See Klemm, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’  June , Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R/.
BdS Thomas order,  Feb. , NA, RG , T-/R / MR  EAP /.
Klemm order on dissolution of the oblast administration,  Feb. , ZSA, P-. The local SS and police leaders were asked to monitor how politicized Ukrainian religion might become. The SD leader in the Aussenstelle Vinnytsia, Salmanzig, wrote to the SS and police district leader of Koziatyn, Behrens, about mass
baptisms and the Catholic Church. Behrens investigated the Roman Catholic
community of Koziatyn and the services that were being held at the cemeteries;
Salmanzig-Behrens correspondence of  Oct. , ZSA, P--.
Commissars’ request to commander of the Order Police, Oelhafen, and his order,
 Mar. , ZSA, P--. General Commissar Klemm,  July , ZSA,
P--.
On the scandals and infighting within the Ukrainian churches, largely centered in
Zhytomyr and Vinnytsia, see Berkhoff, ‘‘Was There a Religious Revival . . . ?’’
Ibid., .
Fireside, Icon and Swastika, –.
Report of RKU Dept. chief IIIg, Economy and Armaments Inspector,  Sept. ,
CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
For example, in Berdychiv the Gendarmerie Hauptmannschaft was located in the
office of the army commander. The OT leaders of ‘‘OT Einsatzstab Russland Süd’’
were located in the same office as the general commissar in Zhytomyr; ZSA, P-. In Zhytomyr the Nazi Party’s welfare organization, the NSV, which distributed
Jewish belongings to ethnic Germans, was located in the ground floor of the Commissariat office building, and set up there with the intent of furthering cooperation
with the commissar. See Party leader Kersten’s report of  Apr. , CSA, Kiev,
-- microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
General Commissar Klemm, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’  June , Bundesarchiv R/.
Joint order from General Commissar’s office and SSPF Hellwig, re: ‘‘Gefährdung
der Ernte,’’  Sept. , ZSA, P--.
Notes to Pages 119–21

 Koch order,  Nov. , CSA, Kiev, -- microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel .
 The OT, Action Group Russia South, took over the General Commissar’s departments of street construction, canals, and hydro economy as of  Nov. . See
the RKU memo in ZSA, P--.
 General Commissar, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’  June , Bundesarchiv R/, pp. –.
 Gendarmerie Commander’s office, Vinnytsia Hauptmannschaftsbefehl, / June
, ‘‘Jüdische Arbeitskräfte,’’ ZSA, P--. Also see memo from Commissariat Labor office,  Aug. , ZSA, P--.
 Erich Koch, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’ Dec. , CSA, Kiev, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel .
 BdS Thomas, Kiev,  Dec. , re: forced labor in Ukraine during June , NA,
RG , T-/R /MR.
 The Aug.  article was printed in Ukrainian newspapers throughout the Zhytomyr region; ZSA, P--a. Ukrainian newspapers in the region were published
in Ruzhyn, Berdychiv, Chudniv, Zhytomyr, Korostyshiv, Novohrad-Volyns’kyi,
Olevs’k, Ovruch, Lel’chytsi, Mazyr, Kalynivka, Vinnytsia, Koziatyn, and Haisyn.
 See SD situation report on Ukraine, specifically about Novohrad-Volyns’kyi (Zviahel) labor transport and rumors concerning the conditions of Ukrainian laborers,
 Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
 Reitlinger, The House Built on Sand, –, and Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, –.
 See ‘‘Daily Routine’’ report of the Koziatyn Camp,  Oct. , ZSA, P--. All
references in this document to Jewish internees and their treatment were crossed
out.
 As of  June , the district commissars took over the establishment and management of camps and requested Ukrainian auxiliaries to stand guard at the camps.
After Mar. , Ukrainians were not trusted with the task of fulfilling the commissars’ demands against other Ukrainians, so German forces were assigned to more
camp duties; ZSA, P--.
 See Commissar Steudel order,  May , ZSA, P--.
 General Commissar Klemm, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’  June , Bundesarchiv Koblenz,
R/.
 Thomas order,  Aug. , Koziatyn Camp files, ZSA, P--; Ruzhyn SSPgebF
file, ZSA, P--.
 BdS Thomas report,  Aug. , ZSA, P--, Koziatyn Camp files. The Himmler order was sent to Gottlob Berger, who was the SS liaison in Rosenberg’s ministry,  Jan. . NA, RG , T-/R /–.
 Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front, . Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde. Also see Birn, Die Höheren
SS und Polizeiführer, .
 On the construction projects in Zhytomyr proper—for example, the German section, the streetcars, and Klemm’s quarters—see ZSA, P--; also see meeting
notes of Klemm’s administrative adviser, Karl Notbohm, about priority building
 Notes to Pages 122–27





projects in the district and tabulations of skilled and unskilled labor,  Aug. ,
ZSA, P–.
BdS Thomas or BdO Oelhafen may have also been present. Statement of Kurt
Klemm,  Aug. , BAL,  AR-Z /, Band III, .
Hellwig order,  July , ZSA, P--.
Klemm statement,  Aug. , BAL,  AR-Z /, Band III, . Statement
of Franz Razesberger,  Jan. , BAL,  AR-Z /, Band III, , . Klemm
memo about uniform to Rosenberg,  July , NA, RG , T-/R /.
Rosenberg-Himmler memo, Sept. . NA, RG , T-/R /.
But, as Timothy Mulligan has pointed out, cooperation among the Germans was
hardly by itself sufficient: ‘‘In January , roughly , Reich Germans governed ,, inhabitants scattered throughout the Reichskommissariat’s five
cities and  raions. . . . These dimensions alone ensured that the most basic levels
of administration depended entirely on Ukrainians.’’ See Mulligan, The Politics of
Illusion and Empire, .
Chapter Six
 Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews (), , .
 As Wetzel put it, Himmler’s forces were ‘‘federführend’’—i.e., in charge. See Otto
Bräutigam file, ‘‘Guidelines for the Treatment of the Jewish Question,’’ NA, RG
, T-/R /MR  EAP /.
 Imort, ‘‘Forestopia.’’
 See witness statements from Vinnytsia, Solomon Goliak (Sept. ) and Lev
Schein (May ), as well as that of a former Ukrainian policeman in Vinnytsia’s
Kripo office, Konstantin Klimanow (Aug. ). BAL,  AR-Z /, –
and –; BAL,  AR-Z /, –.
 On the July  structure, see the Kommandobefehl distribution list, ZSA, P-. See Dean, ‘‘The German Gendarmerie, the Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft and the
‘Second Wave’ of Jewish Killings in Occupied Ukraine,’’ –.
 Franz Razesberger was acquitted by a Vienna court,  July . LG Wien:  Vr
/, Viennese Post-War Trials of Nazi War Crimes, USHMM, RG-.M.
 At first the Schutzmannschaften were permitted to wear Ukrainian national armbands, which also bore their service number and locale assigned by the Germans.
The uniforms consisted of Red Army uniforms with the Soviet insignias torn off.
The mobile battalions in Zhytomyr were # ( men), # ( men); #
( men) and Lithuanian battalion # ( men); Latvian battalion # (
men). ZSA, P--. Hauptmannschaftsbefehl /, ZSA, --; KdG order
of  Feb. , ZSA, --. An ethnic German mobile killing unit from Latvia
was involved in the Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi massacres of Aug. . See Pohl,
‘‘Schauplatz Ukraine,’’ –.
 Klemm order of  Dec. , ZSA, P--; KdG Kommandobefehl Nr. /, ZSA,
P--.
Notes to Pages 127–31

 This order referred to a revision of the Jan.  instructions, which have not been
found. Gendarme leaders in Vinnytsia reissued the Mar.  order in June .
See Hauptmannschaft Winniza ‘‘Sonderbefehl,’’  Mar. , ZSA, P--.
 Gendarme post, Ruzhyn, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’ Sept. , ZSA, P--.
 The ages of the German police leaders ranged from thirty-two to forty-six. The SS
and police leader for Koziatyn was Heinrich Behrens (b. ); the district lieutenant of the gendarmerie of Koziatyn was Christian Kirschner (b. ); the district senior guard for Samhorodok was Josef Richter, and the master gendarme in
Pohrebyshche was Bruno Mayrhofer. The gendarme station and police headquarters were located in Koziatyn’s former Communist Party building; the Ukrainian
auxiliaries were in the former militia building. ZSA, P--.
 Their training site was also the former prisoner barracks, which had been the district’s Jewish camp in . See BdO ‘‘Guidelines for Training the Schutzmannschaft’’ and Himmler order on the training and schooling of Schutzmannschaften
in local posts,  Aug. , ZSA, --,  and .
 About one-third were agricultural workers; the next biggest group were ‘‘casual
laborers.’’ See report from gendarme leader at Pohrebyshche,  Dec. , ZSA,
P--, and  Aug. , ZSA, P--. On plundering and court sentences
of Ukrainian police, see Koziatyn and Ruzhyn SS and Police district files,  July
, ZSA, P--, P--.
 Nina Borisovna Glozman, interview by Kira Burova,  Feb. , Office of Jewish
Affairs and Emigration, Zhytomyr Oblast, Ukraine.
 SS and police district leader, Behrens, Koziatyn,  July , ZSA, P-c-.
 ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Koziatyn Case, BAL, ARZ  /, Band II, –.
 Ibid., .
 SS and Police District Leader Behrens memo of  Sept. , ZSA, P--.
 See numerous reports of Jan.–July and Oct.–Nov. , SS and police district leaders
of Koziatyn and Ruzhyn, ZSA, P-- and P--.
 Report of Meister d. Gen u. Postenführer Mayrhofer to Koziatyn SS and police district leader,  May , ZSA, P--.
 Hauptmannschaftsbefehl, Berdychiv, order that begins ‘‘a special case has made it
necessary to advise that it is forbidden to employ Jewish labor in quarters . . . ,’’
 June , ZSA, P--; Ruzhyn SSPgebF,  Mar. , ZSA, P-.
 SS and Police Leader Heinrich Behrens order of  July , ZSA, -c-.
 Pavlo Gorlach, interview by author,  May , Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Gorlach was
the half brother of Svetlana Borkovsky, born Luba Gerschmann, a Jewish girl who
was protected by his mother and brought to the orphanage. The orphanage at
Michailovska Street in Zhytomyr concealed eight Jewish children. On the orphanage, see Zhytomyrshchyna v period,  (document no. ); and Zhilbovskaia, ‘‘The
Memory That I Save.’’ Valentina Petrovna Shchenevskaia, a worker at the orphanage
who concealed the Jewish children, was honored by Yad Vashem as one of Zhyto-
 Notes to Pages 131–34











myr’s ‘‘Righteous’’; interview by author with Shchenevskaia,  May , Zhytomyr, Ukraine.
Umanskij, Jüdisches Glück, –.
Kaienburg, ‘‘Jüdische Arbeitslager an der ‘Strasse der SS,’ ’’ .
Monthly report of SS and police district leader of Koziatyn, Friedrich Baumgärtner,
Nov. , ZSA, P--.
The average age in July  and on  Mar.  was twenty to twenty-five. ZSA,
P--.
Of these , Schutzmänner, , were in the fire brigade; General Commissar, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’  May , ZSA, P--.
The Hitler-OKW policy of rewarding eastern peoples for bravery was introduced
on  July . The Richter nomination is dated  May ; ZSA, P--.
The SD shooting was at Germanivka; local collective farmers dug the pit. Koziatyn
Case, BAL, a AR-Z /, Band II, –.
At Radomyshl’ as well as nearby Bila Tserkva, it was suggested by German police
and military leaders that the Ukrainians be given the job of executing the children. In another case, the female ethnic German translator for the gendarme post
at Khmil’nyk, Elsa Säler, was accused in eyewitness accounts of identifying and
shooting Jewish children in the ghetto action on  Jan. . Koziatyn case, BAL,
Abschlussbericht II a ARZ /, . Ereignismeldung about Radomyshl’, 
Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R /. August Häfner statement about Bila
Tserkva,  May , Trial of Kuno Callsen et al., BAL,  AR-Z /.
Black, ‘‘Police Auxiliaries for Operation Reinhard.’’
Himmler and other local German commanders were concerned about the psychological repercussions on the German executioners; there were cases of mental
breakdowns and suicide within the Einsatzgruppen. But this concern did not develop into a formal policy of deploying more Ukrainian police as executioners. On
the psychological effects described by former members of SKa, see statement of
Dr. Arthur Boss,  June , and statement of Victor Trill,  June , Callsen
Trial, BAL,  AR-Z /. Christopher Browning has written that the dramatic
increase in local auxiliaries in  was representative of a ‘‘constant tendency to
assign the actual shooting duties to these units, in order to shift the psychological burden from the German police to their collaborators.’’ See Browning, Ordinary
Men, –. Richard Breitman demonstrates that Himmler dealt with the psychological effects in other ways, by, for example, ‘‘holding social gatherings . . . and by
teaching the men about the political necessity of these measures.’’ See Breitman,
The Architect of Genocide, –, –.
The Zhytomyr training school agenda and schedule are among the SS and police
files from Koziatyn, ZSA, P--. Also see the Himmler-Rosenberg agreement
defining the anti-Semitic goals of the training, NA, RG , T-/R /–
. Indoctrination of the Schutzmänner as a German policy began in Aug. ;
Notes to Pages 134–37











KdO Zhytomyr order on the ‘‘Political Instruction of Schutzmannschaften,’’ and
report of  Sept. , ZSA, P--a; also see the SSPF Zhytomyr memo on
ideological training,  Oct. , ZSA, P--.
BdO Ukraine, Polizeischulungsleiter,  Aug. , ZSA, P--a. Similar
themes appeared in the training of Sipo-SD elites. See Matthäus, Kwiet, Förster,
and Breitman, Ausbildungsziel Judenmord?
One of the key figures behind the ideological training of the Order Police in Ukraine
was Adolf von Bomhard, who assumed the post of commander of the Order Police,
Ukraine, on  Oct. , and remained in this position until  Oct. ; see ZSA,
P-- and P--. For Bomhard’s wartime and postwar career and defensive strategy (he was mayor of Prien in  and died in ), see Martin Hölzl,
‘‘Grüner Rock und weisse Weste.’’
This was according to Himmler’s order on the ‘‘politische Betreuung der Schutzmannschaft,’’ which was issued on  June . Some of the educational themes
were spelled out first by the Orpo training leader on  Aug. , ZSA, P-a, and then by the Schupo office in Berdychiv on  Oct. , ZSA, P--.
See the local Order Police commander’s order that gendarmes must remain on
secured routes during patrols; Befehl / no., ZSA, P--. The Zhytomyr
training school agenda and schedule are among the SS and police files from Koziatyn, ZSA, P--. Also see the Himmler-Rosenberg exchange over the antiSemitic goals of the training, NA, RG , T-/R /–.
A gendarme leader in Berdychiv revealed that Schutzmänner had been deployed as
officers without German commanders and had shown themselves to be especially
productive;  July , RGVA, Moscow --, pp. –. Also see ‘‘Hauptmannschaftsbefehl’’ from Mazyr that Ukrainian Schutzmänner who do not fight
partisans during action should be shot on the spot by a fellow Schutzmann, or, if
necessary, by a German commander. Aug. (?) , Minsk Archive --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel . The figure of , men is in an SS-police
report of  Oct. , ZSA, P--.
KdG ‘‘Kommandobefehl,’’  June , ZSA, P--.
‘‘Brown File,’’ RGVA, --, pp. , .
See the report of the RKU, Abteilung Ernährung und Landwirtschaft,  Feb. ,
CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
On Koziatyn camp and mealtimes, see ZSA, P--. Most of the Jews who were
held here were killed before Oct. , though a few remained when the camp was
closed in May . See correspondence between the SD Berdychiv chief, Knop, and
District Commissar Steudel,  May , ZSA, P--. On the sawdust ration,
see testimony of Lev Schein of  May , BAL, II  AR-Z /, .
See SS and police district leader of Koziatyn report to SD Berdychiv,  Feb. ,
ZSA, P--, pp. –, and gendarme leader of Pohrebyshche to SS and police
leader of Koziatyn,  Mar. , ZSA, P--.

Notes to Pages 137–40
 Müssig to district commissars, July  and  Oct. , ZSA, P--.
 Regierungsrat Göllner order,  Nov. , USHMM, ZSA, reel , P--,
microfilm held at USHMM, .A., reel . See the ‘‘Judenabgabe’’ lists of
Gebietskommissar Dr. Blümel’s office, Nov.  to Feb. , ZSA, P--,
microfilm held at USHMM, .A., reel .
 Klemm to commissariat offices,  Dec. , ZSA, P--, p. .
 See the several cases regarding the disposition of former Jewish housing on Liubarska Strasse in the city of Zhytomyr. One mentions that an apartment with Jewish
furnishings had been occupied by the German sergeant of the field commander’s
administration; memo of  May , ZSA, P--.
 Housing and furniture requests, Herr Plisko’s  July  revised procedures for
handling of Jewish property, ZSA, P--.
 RKU report to Omi Berlin [Rosenberg ministry in Berlin],  May , CSA, Kiev,
--, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
 See the ‘‘Kommandobefehl’’ of  June , ZSA, P--. The deliberate medical neglect and killing of persons with physical and mental disabilities occurred
in Vinnytsia under City Commissar Margenfeld. See investigation and statement
of Fritz Margenfeld (Stadtkommissar Vinnytsia), from  Mar. , BAL, Staatsanwaltschaft Stuttgart,  Js /, –.
 In the general commissar’s office, Klemm and Leyser’s top advisers were Dr. Zagel,
Dr. Moyisch, and Dr. Knust; the chief justice was Dr. Gunkel; the chief public
prosecutor was Dr. Derks; the chief of staff of the department of economy was
Dr. Karl Amend, and his subordinate chief of industry and manufacturing was
Dr. Hollnagel; the chief of labor was Dr. Feierabend. The head of food distribution and farming was Dr. Königk. The chief of administration of policy, who oversaw anti-Jewish measures, was Dr. Rauch. See staff charts and telephone listings
in ZSA, P--. The average age of the commissars and staff heads was thirtysix to forty-five, which means that their doctorates were granted in the period from
the late s to the mid-s.
 See the ‘‘Verordnung über polizeiliche Strafgewalt der Gebietskommissar,’’  Aug.
, in the ‘‘Brown File,’’ RGVA, --, p. .
 The deputy’s name was (Heinrich?) Sundermeier. See the ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Litin
Case, BAL, II a AR-Z /, –.
 ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Koziatyn Case, BAL,  ARZ / Band II, –.
 The civil administration in Belorussia played a similar role, according to Chiari,
Alltag hinter der Front,  and chapter .
 One field commander’s report revealed the number of army commanders posted in
the southern part of the region. Local military administration commanders were
in Berdychiv, Haisyn, Brailiv, Nemyriv, Kalynivka, Waldsee, Kordylivka, Brodetske,
Chesseliv, Khmil’nyk, Kozhyshiv, Lityn, Popil’nia, Koziatyn, Myropil, Ivanopil’, Voronovytsia, Lypovets’, and Illintsi. See report of  May , ZSA, P--.
Notes to Pages 140–42

 See Case against Franz Razesberger, BAL, II  AR-Z / I, –.
 ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Koziatyn Case, BAL, a AR-Z /, Band II, .
 Ibid., . The SD killing sweep in Teplyk and Sobolevka is noted in Kruglov, Unichtozhenie evreiskogo naseleniia v Vinnitskoi, –. The cruel treatment of Hungarian Jewish
laborers in Ukraine (attached to the Second Hungarian Army) is detailed in Braham,
The Hungarian Labor Service System, –.
 Since the early years of the Third Reich, Hitler promoted a policy of exploiting ‘‘inferior’’ elements through hard labor in the first concentration camps, but it was
not until Nazi leaders planned for the war in early  that it was decided that
Jews who were banned from the Wehrmacht should instead supply the labor for
the military’s proposed network of roads in the East. This was decided by officials
from the army, the Ministry of the Interior, the Gestapo, the Order Police, and the
inspector of the Concentration Camps (Theodor Eicke). See Kaienburg, ‘‘Jüdische
Arbeitslager an der ‘Strasse der SS,’ ’’ . The use of Jews in forced labor projects
and the radicalization of this anti-Jewish policy is examined in Aly and Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung, , . Also see Gruner, Der geschlossene Arbeitseinsatz deutscher
Juden.
 The italics are mine. The important distinction here is the German use of the word
‘‘verbrauchen,’’ meaning ‘‘used up’’ instead of simply ‘‘used.’’  Aug. , NA,
RG , T-/R / p. .
 See Ereignismeldung,  Sept. , in The Einsatzgruppen Reports, ed. Arad, Krakowski, and Spector, , and the unedited version of a related Einsatzgruppe C report
of  Sept. , in NA, RG , T-/R /.
 Ereignismeldung,  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
 See the report ‘‘Kriegsgefangenen-Arbeiterkompanien für Strassenunterhaltung,’’
 Sept. , Befh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG , T-/R /–.
 In Oct.  Jews had been placed in DG IV camps near L’viv, where the road originated. See Case against Franz Razesberger, BAL, II AR-Z  / I, . A much
larger number of camps and workers were assigned to the L’viv construction of
DG IV; see Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien.
 Report of ‘‘Kriegsgefangenen-Arbeiterkompanien für Strassenunterhaltung,’’ in
war diary of Bfh.rückw.H.Geb.Süd., NA, RG , T- R /–.
 See Kaienburg, ‘‘Jüdische Arbeitslager an der ‘Strasse der SS,’ ’’ –.
 Daghani, The Grave Is in the Cherry Orchard, . The firms were August DohrmannSchütte, Feras, Kaspar, Emmerich, Horst Jüssen, Kaiser, Stoer, Teeras, and Ufer.
Among the earliest accounts of DG IV operations/camps and the Holocaust, is
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, originally published in ; see the rd
ed., –. Also see more detailed research on this by Angrick, ‘‘Forced Labor
along the Strasse der SS.’’
 Statement of Josef Rader,  June , and Statement of Friedrich Halle,  May
, DG IV Case (Friese et al.), BAL,  AR-Z /, –, –. Statement
of Karl Klenk,  Apr. , Landeskriminalamt Baden-Württemberg, Tgb.Nr. SK.
 Notes to Pages 142–45











Zst. III/-/. Thanks to Jürgen Matthäus for the Klenk material. Interrogations
related to DG IV are found also in Case , BAL, AR-Z /, and the investigation of Vinnytsia’s SS and police, BAL,  AR-Z /.
Nor did the commissars always approve of the construction work in their own districts. In Lityn Gebietskommissar Vollkammer (who had been actively involved in
anti-Jewish actions in  and had supplied Jewish laborers for the DGIV, which
ran about seven kilometers from his office) filed a complaint to the OT station in
June  that the excavation of granite in his district had destroyed valuable farmland. ZSA, P--. The agricultural leaders had predicted that the DGIV construction would interfere with local farming because of the wide areas around the
sites where laborers and guards were stationed. See WistabOst, ‘‘Lage der Landwirtschaft in der Ukraine,’’  Apr. , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
Statement of Josef Rader,  June , DG IV Case, BAL,  AR-Z /, –
; also see Kaienburg, ‘‘Jüdische Arbeitslager an der ‘Strasse der SS,’ ’’ –. See
Daghani’s exchange with the OT leader regarding Firma Dohrmann’s complaint in
Daghani, The Grave Is in the Cherry Orchard, .
‘‘Feldurteil,’’ Gericht der Kdtr. des Bereiches Proskuriv (FK ),  Mar. , in
MHI, Prague, various SS records, carton B. I am grateful to Jürgen Matthäus for
this document.
See Pohl, Von der ‘‘Judenpolitik’’ zum Judenmord, and Sandkühler, ‘‘Endlösung’’ in Galizien.
Goykher, The Tragedy of the Letichev Ghetto, .
Kaienburg, ‘‘Jüdische Arbeitslager an der ‘Strasse der SS,’ ’’ .
Ibid., –.
A survivor who worked in a quarry run by Firma Horst Jüssen-Steinbrüche in
Tul’chyn reported that they were called to work at : .. and at midday received
a ‘‘meal’’ of cabbage soup and peas with maggots. See Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der
europäischen Juden, :. Daghani, The Grave Is in the Cherry Orchard, –.
Daghani, The Grave Is in the Cherry Orchard, –.
The OT held contracts with the governments of Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria
regarding construction projects and labor. Hungarian Jews made up some of the
larger labor battalions in Ukraine that were controlled by the OT and Wehrmacht.
See Braham, The Hungarian Labor Service System, –. For one of the few overviews of
the OT, its numerous labor projects in Nazi-occupied Europe, and its relations with
private German firms and other government and Party agencies, see the SHAEF
study Handbook of the Organization Todt (London: MIRS, Mar. ); copies of this
study are held at the NA and USHMM.
The Bug River was the demarcation line between Romanian-administered Transnistria and German-occupied Ukraine. See request of the German military to the
govenor of Transnistria, Odessa Archives, --, microfilm held at USHMM,
reel . Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, :. Jews from Bessarabia and
Bukovina who had been deported to Transnistria were given over to the Germans by
the Romanians. The Wehrmacht used the Jews in the construction of bridges and
Notes to Pages 145–49










defense fortifications. ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Sittig Case, BAL, II a AR-Z /,
–. Also see exchanges between Romanian Labor offices and prefects in Transnistria with the Wehrmacht in Odessa on the Trihaty bridge project and DG IV work
in Nikolaev, Odessa Archives, --, USHMM, RG .M. I am grateful to
Viorel Achim for bringing these reports to my attention and translating the Romanian.
See Karl Klenk testimony of  May , BAL,  AR-Z /.
See Ernst Johannes Schmidt (b. ) testimony of  June , BAL,  AR-Z
/, Band I, – and –. The figure of , is from Kaienburg, ‘‘Jüdische Arbeitslager an der ‘Strasse der SS,’ ’’ .
Khmil’nyk massacres in BAL, II  AR-Z /. Kruglov, Unichtozhenie evreiskogo
naseleniia v Vinnitskoi, .
See the telegram to RSD (Reich Sicherheitsdienst) leader, SS Standartenführer Rattenhuber,  Jan. , regarding security at Eichenhain and skilled labor at the
construction site. This stated that Reichsminister ‘‘Dr. Todt will place several hundred Jews at the building site.’’ Security officials (Himmler’s SD chiefs) opposed
this measure. CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M,
reel .
A large portion of the Jewish labor used in the northern part of the Zhytomyr region
came from Hungary. The presence of Hungarian Jews in the region was further revealed by a report about an incident of  Apr.  when the Germans placed 
Hungarian Jews in a barn of the collective farm in Kupyshche (Korosten’) and set
the barn on fire. RKU Rivne to Omi Berlin,  May , CSA, Kiev, --,
microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel . Hungarian Minister of Defense
Nagy’s inquiry and survivor testimonies estimated that  Jews died in the massacre of  Apr. . The barns had served as a quarantined area for Jews with
typhoid who had been left to die, located on the Dorozhishche collective farm. See
Braham, The Hungarian Labor Service System, .
See the ‘‘Fernschreiben’’ of  Jan. , CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG .M, reel .
See the Himmler memo of  Jan.  regarding the Jewish question in the East,
NA, RG , T-/ R /MR.
Hitler arrived on  July and stayed until  Nov. . He returned on  Feb. 
and remained through  Mar. . See the construction and security memos,
RGVA, Moscow --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M., reel , and
‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Schmidt/Danner Case, Sta München, Js /. I am grateful to Konrad Kwiet for bringing ‘‘Eichenhain’’ and related sources to my attention.
The RSD developed from a special protection service for the Führer, known as the
Führerschutzkommando. The SS and police officers who secured the Führer headquarters were placed under the Geheime Feldpolizei Ost (a special military secret
field police group in the East). The chief of this group in Vinnytsia was Fried-
 Notes to Pages 150–51









rich Schmidt, and his deputy was Karl Danner. See ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ SchmidtDanner Case, BAL, case no. Js /.
Original German document dated  Jan. , quoted in the ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’
Schmidt/Danner Case, Sta München,  Js /.
Pre-Dec. cleansing of the area is mentioned in Schmidt’s report to Rattenhuber,
 Dec. , CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel
. Rattenhuber ordered the Gebietskommissar to carry out the actions (report of
 Jan. ). Later, at the end of Mar., it was decided to clear the area from the
airport to the headquarters. CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel .
GPU (Glavnoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie)—that is, Main Political Office—operated
in the Soviet Union during the s and became the NKVD in the s. Officials
involved in the Strizhavka operation included four Sipo, twenty Feldgendarmerie
and Schupo, and other personnel from the Eichenhain office. See Schmidt’s ‘‘Short
Report about the Activities of the Office in the New Security Area,’’  Jan. ,
CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
Generalmajor Reichtmeier to Zhytomyr gendarme stations ( of them),  Jan.
, ZSA, P--, USHMM, reel . For Nazi searches for ‘‘fleeing Jews’’ from
Kamenets Podoliia’yi and from Tschenstochau, Poland, possibly headed toward
Vinnytsia area in May and June , see ZSA, P--.
Massacres in early Aug. and on  Sept.  took the lives of , Jews. Israel
Weiner, letter about the fate of his family members in Vinnytsia,  May , copy
at USHMM, RG ..
Bullets were not ‘‘wasted’’ on the smaller children, who were crushed by hand
and then thrown into the mass graves. Soviet witness statements, statement of
Lev Aleksandrovich Shein,  May , Schmidt/Danner Case, BAL, II a/ARZ /, –. Statement of Fritz Margenfeld,  July , BAL, Stuttgart
Staatsanwaltschaft,  Js /, . In the first half of Aug. EK killed about  Jews
in Vinnytsia and  Jews in Khmil’nyk; in addition  were killed at Tomashpil’,
and  at Litin. See Kruglov, Unichtozhenie evreiskogo naseleniia v Vinnitskoi oblasti, –.
The brick works was located at the edge of town; it normally housed about 
workers. Ereignismeldung C report,  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /
. With regard to its being an OT-Eichenhain operation, see the city commissar of Vinnytsia’s report on industry in Vinnytsia,  Nov. , NA, RG ,
T-/R /–.
Communication between the SS-Police Leader Vinnytsia, Major Pomme, and district commissars of Vinnytsia with the chief of Sipo and SD Vinnytsia (Salmanzig)
are described in a security report sent to Rattenhuber, Chief RSD, ‘‘Judenfrage in
Winniza und Umgebung,’’ CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel .
See the survivor witness statement of Solomon Goliak,  Sept. , BAL, a
Notes to Pages 151–53









AR-Z /, –; and the statement of Johann Bahmann,  Oct. , BAL,
a AR-Z /, –. This massacre is also described in Gutman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. , s.v. ‘‘Vinnitsa.’’
See the report to Rattenhuber (illegible date), ‘‘Judenfrage in Winniza und Umgebung,’’ CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel ;
also see Ereignismeldung of  Aug. , and Einsatzgruppe C report of  Aug.
, in The Einsatzgruppen Reports, ed. Arad, Krakowski, and Spector, , . See
Ancel, Transnistria.
Razesberger order to SD Vinnytsia,  July . CSA, Kiev, --, p. ;
thanks to Richard Breitman for this document. According to Shmuel Spector, this
order was rescinded by the local SD office in Vinnytsia and Prützmann to the extent that a small number were killed then and the rest were sent to the Jewish labor
camps in the area, and died later in  and . See Gutman, ed., Encyclopedia
of the Holocaust, vol. , s.v. ‘‘Vinnitsa.’’
Kriegsverdienstkreuz and Werwolf compound measures, RGVA, --,
microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M., reel .
The compound contained a swimming pool, a movie theater, a teahouse, an officer’s club, a barbershop, and a residence for Martin Bormann (the military’s General Staff chief ), Hitler’s personal aides, and top security personnel. Two local
historians in Vinnytsia, Luiza Bilozerova and Faina Vinokurova, have investigated
Werwolf and the fate of the POWs. In Feb.  the actual site was for sale, stirring
up local conflicts about its economic value as a tourist site versus its noncommercial value as a memorial site. See Myroslava Sokolova, ‘‘Werewolf [sic] for Sale: What
Should Happen to Hitler’s Former Underground Headquarters?,’’ in the newspaper
Den (Kiev),  Feb. .
Himmler’s Hegewald compound was run by more than  SS officers and ,
SS men; it was bordered by the Teteriv and Gryva rivers, placed along the road
from Zhytomyr to Berdychiv at a former Soviet air base. Underground communications were established between the bunkers, airport and headquarters. Today it
is a large cargo airport located in Ozerne; two of the German bunkers remain, but
the Himmler headquarters was largely destroyed during the Nazi evacuation.
Testimony of Franz Razesberger,  July , –, Landesgericht Wien, 
Vr//, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, # and .
Razesberger got his instructions from Thomas in Kiev. Razesberger claims that
they delayed killing the Jews for about a month until May, when they feared the
arrival of Himmler. Testimony of Franz Razesberger, BAL, III  AR-Z /, –
.
According to Hülsdunker, he had been told when he arrived in May  that an oral
Hitler order had been given to shoot every Jew. The SD Berdychiv office consisted of
three officers, two Gestapo/Stapo agents, six SS men, thirty-fifty Ukrainian militia,
and twenty-five Ukrainian agents (Kripo and V-männer). See Case against Knop
et al. in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, :–.

Notes to Pages 153–56
 See Borisovich’s testimony in Elisavetskii, Berdichevskaia tragediia, . I am grateful
to Asya Vaisman for translating this testimony from Russian into English.
 Ehrenburg and Grossman, eds., The Black Book, .
 City Commissar’s Office, Abteilung IIIa,  Oct. , NA, RG  T, roll
//p. . On the  Jews in the clothing factory, see Professor Grunberg’s
report of  Sept. . CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel .
 See the statement of the former truck driver at Stalag , Friedrich Buck,  Nov.
, in ‘‘Abschlussbericht,’’ Case against Franz Razesberger, BAL, II  AR-Z
/ I, .
Chapter Seven
 In June  Himmler chose the code name ‘‘Hegewald’’ for his East Prussian
field headquarters fifty kilometers from Hitler’s Wolfsschanze. In mid-July  he
established his Hegewald headquarters near Zhytomyr and renamed his East Prussian site ‘‘Hochwald.’’ The German verb hegen means to ‘‘preserve,’’ ‘‘look after,’’
or ‘‘nurse.’’ A Hegemeister is a gamekeeper. In the Nazi context, the term Hegehof
was rumored to mean a ‘‘breeding yard’’ where reliable Nordic girls begot children
with SS men under the jurisdiction of the SS Race and Settlement Office. Multiple
references to Hegewald are found in Witte et al., eds., Der Dienstkalender Heinrich
Himmlers.
 The Hitler-Himmler vision of the Germanized eastern landscape is described in a
number of sources, including the somewhat problematic (self-vindicating) memoir by Albert Speer, Infiltration, . More reliable sources include Hartenstein, Neue
Dorflandschaften, –; Madajczyk, ed., Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan.
Also see Harvey, Women and the Nazi East.
 See W. Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism.
 Alan Steinweis, ‘‘Eastern Europe and the Notion of the ‘Frontier’ in Germany to
,’’ in Germany and Eastern Europe (Yearbook of European Studies ), ed. Bullivant,
Giles, and Pape, .
 Harvey, Women and the Nazi East, .
 White, ‘‘Majdanek’’; Pohl, Von der ‘‘Judenpolitik’’ zum Judenmord.
 The concept of ‘‘settlement pearls’’ was presented in an Aug.  meeting at Hegewald. See the ‘‘Summary Notes’’ from the conference on Volksdeutsche, NA, RG
, No-; see also in the entry for  Aug.  in Der Dienstkalender Heinrich
Himmlers, ed. Witte et al., –.
 Few records about Himmler’s Hegewald SS compound survived the war, and many
may remain classified in former Soviet archives. See the report of SS Oberführer
Jungkunz on the evacuation and destruction of Himmler’s headquarters, which
reveals the facilities on the compound, for example, two airfields, large military
training/exercise facilities, more than twenty houses and building, shops, warehouses, and a ‘‘Heroes Cemetery’’; evacuation ‘‘diary’’ of events from Nov. ,
Notes to Pages 157–63










NA, RG , T-/R /–. There is some description of the base in Breitman, The Architect of Genocide, , drawn largely from the postwar statement of the
SD chief in Zhytomyr who visited the site, Franz Razesberger; statement of  Jan.
, BAL,  AR-Z / , –.
In Aug.  Himmler expanded Hoffmeyer’s position as chief of Sonderkommando Russland by creating the ‘‘Volksdeutsche Leitstelle,’’ formally combining
various SS offices that dealt with ethnic German programs and resettlement,
such as the RKFDV, the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (RuSHA), VoMi, and SS
Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt into a new SS ‘‘coordinating’’ office for ethnic Germans in the East. It was under the direct command of Higher SS and Police
Leader Prützmann in Kiev, but the office itself was situated in Zhytomyr near Hegewald. Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries, .
In the Soviet territories, there were no independent offices of Heydrich’s EWZ (Einwandererzentralstelle, Central Immigration Office) or of Eichmann’s UWZ (Umwandererzentralstelle, Central Resettlement Office). The revised GPO (Generalplan Ost, General Plan East) of May  incorporated the former Soviet territories
and planned for settlement centers in Ukraine (Rivne, Shepetivka, Berdychiv, Bila
Tserkva, Bobruisk, Piatykhatky, Kryvyi Rih, and Nikolaev). Five months later the
plans were scaled back to mainly the Black Sea region and Zhytomyr, with centers in
Zviahel, Berdychiv, Zhytomyr, Uman’, Nikolaev, and Dnipropetrovs’k. Heinemann,
‘‘Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut,’’ .
Himmler’s Hegewald speech,  Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R /, p. .
See General Commissar Klemm memo to his district commissars about the meeting with SS-VoMi leader Hoffmeyer on  May , ZSA, P--.
The Hegewald settlement was promoted in the Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung (Luts’k),
 May . For a comparison of facilities in the Ukrainian Volksdeutsche settlements, see the VoMi report dated  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
On the different experiences of the Volksdeutsche in relation to the Holocaust, see
Bergen, ‘‘The ‘Volksdeutschen’ of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust’’; Valdis O. Lumans, ‘‘A Reassessment of Volksdeutsche and Jews in the VolhyniaGalicia-Narew Resettlement,’’ in The Impact of Nazism, ed. Rogers and Steinweis,
–.
See Aly, ‘‘Final Solution’’; Aly and Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung; R.-D. Müller, Hitlers
Ostkrieg; and Koehl, RKFDV.
R.-D. Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg, .
Doris Bergen argues in her thoughtful analysis of the Volksdeutsche and the Holocaust that the ‘‘tenuousness of the notion of ‘Volksdeutsche’ actually contributed
to the intensification of anti-semitism.’’ True, the Nazi mission to ‘‘rescue’’ the
Volksdeutsche served as a rationale for some German perpetrators of the Holocaust. Even Himmler told his men at Hegewald to remember that the current sacrifices and hardships they endured in the East were heroic contributions toward Germany’s future Lebensraum. In Zhytomyr, the more common rationale ‘‘on paper’’
 Notes to Pages 164–66







for killing Jews was ‘‘to secure the Reich’’; this Nazi approach provided an immediate, convincing motivation for actions against the Jews whom the Nazis deemed
the most threatening. See Bergen, ‘‘The Nazi Concept of ‘Volksdeutsche,’’’ .
In the summer of , when Zhytomyr’s SD chief, Franz Razesberger, issued an
oral order to kill the remaining Jews in Berdychiv (many of whom had labored at
Hegewald), he explained the murder as a ‘‘security precaution.’’ On the Razesberger
order, see Case against Knop et al., in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, :–. See also
Dieter Pohl, ‘‘Schauplatz Ukraine,’’ in Ausbeutung, Vernichtung, Öffentlichkeit, ed. Frei.
See Koehl, RKFDV, –. The RFSS ordinance on Party and SS jurisdiction regarding ethnic questions (NO-) is reprinted in Koehl, –. On the history of
VoMi, see Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries.
The German People’s List (DVL) consisted of four categories: Group I represented
those deemed racially Aryan and willing to be Germanized; Group II, racially pure
Germans who lacked a will to be Germanized but were capable of being Germanized; Group III those with mixed but predominantly Aryan blood and capable of
being Germanized, and who could apply for temporary Reich citizenship and then
live under racial political surveillance for ten years before receiving citizenship;
Group IV were those with only some German blood, assimilated to other groups
and unwilling to become German citizens or considered unfit for Germanization.
Persons in the last category were handed over to the Gestapo and then were sent
to camps or liquidated on the spot. Those who fit into categories I and II were immediately eligible for Reich German citizenship. See Fleischhauer and Pinkus, The
Soviet Germans, –.
VoMi activity report for Sept.–Dec. . ‘‘Aussenstelle Zhitomir’’ was led by SS
Obersturmführer Müller, who arrived on  Sept. , ZSA, P--. On Müller’s arrival, see KTB SD, NA, RG , T-//.
Later, Himmler’s commandos counted , Volksdeutsche in Dnipropetrovs’k
and , Volksdeutsche in Transnistria. Himmler’s VoMi worked with the population under Romanian control in Transnistria and planned to resettle these Germans to Crimea, but these plans were cut short in . In Dnipropetrovs’k Nazi
leaders concentrated into settlements , Volksdeutsche who had been spread
across that region’s  villages. See VoMi report of  Aug. , NA, RG ,
T-/R /.
Stumpp’s Ostwanderung () was the second volume in the series Sammlung Georg
Leibbrandt, Quellen zur Erforschung des Deutschtums in Osteuropa. Leibbrandt was Rosenberg’s chief of the political department in the Ostministerium from July  to
. For a recent analysis of Stumpp’s and Leibbrandt’s work in Ukraine and their
postwar fate, see Schmaltz and Sinner, ‘‘The Nazi Ethnographic Research of Georg
Leibbrandt and Karl Stumpp.’’ Also see Brown, A Biography of No Place, –.
Many of his ethnic German investigators were attached to the army’s agricultural
inspectors. See Stumpp report to Roques regarding his field work in Zhytomyr,
 Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
Notes to Pages 166–67

 On the goals of NSV in the East, see CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG .M, reel ; for clothing drives in Zhytomyr, see ZSA, P--.
 On shipment of Jewish belongings from the Reich and from France to Zhytomyr,
see the correspondence between party leader Degenhard at RMfdbO and NSV,  July
, CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
 See the Einsatzgruppe C report of  Oct. , in The Einsatzgruppen Reports, ed. Arad,
Krakowski, and Spector, .
 Hoffmeyer was ‘‘attached to the SD office in Kiev, under the command of HSSPF
Russland Süd.’’ Lumans finds that the VoMi representatives relied heavily on local
SD task forces, but he does not explore whether VoMi personnel were also involved
in the anti-Jewish massacres that the SD forces were simultaneously carrying out.
Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries, –.
 See the report ‘‘Hauptamt VoMi, Aussenstelle Shitomir: Arbeit und Aufgaben der
Volksdeutschen Mittelstelle,’’ Sept.–Dec. , ZSA, P--. Also see the Hoffmeyer report of  Oct. , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
 Klemm to all city and district commissars,  Feb. , ZSA, P--. This order
was quickly followed by a circular memo to the commissars from Koch’s office
clarifying that the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle under SS Oberführer Hoffmeyer was
charged with the task of taking in and training ethnic German men who could support security and administrative measures, and that the Stumpp teams were surveying through questionnaires the ethnic German settlements and individuals. The
commissars were instructed to assist in these efforts as well as care for the needy;
Volksdeutsche RKU(IIa) memo,  Feb. , ZSA, P--.
 See Schmidt, ‘‘Lagebericht’’ (illegible date), with references to spring , ZSA,
P--.
 General Commissar Klemm report on Volksdeutsche teachers to Nazi Party headquarters in Berlin,  Mar. , in CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG .M, reel .
 A series of articles appeared in July  about the ethnic German celebrations
in Zhytomyr surrounding the building of the kindergarten. Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung
(Luts’k),  July ,  July ,  July , and  July , Library of Congress,
newspaper microfilm .
 See ‘‘Vermerk,’’  June , CSA, Kiev, -- microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel , and ‘‘Einweisung von  Kindergärtnerinnen zur Betreuung Volksdeutscher in der Ukraine,’’  July , CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG .M, reel .
 See NSV, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’  Sept. , Zhytomyr, CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel . On  Dec. , commissars announced
that schooling was mandatory for ethnic German children. Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung
(Luts’k),  Dec. , p. , Library of Congress, newspaper microfilm .
 See the NSV report of – June  and RMfdbO report of  June , CSA,

Notes to Pages 167–69












Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel . Irma Wildhagen
and her staff of nurses set up infant-mother stations in Cherniakhiv, NovohradVolyns’kyi, Andreïv, Goroshki, and Sadki. See the overview of NSV staff dated
 Aug. , CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M,
reel .
This file on educational materials for German youth in the East contains no date,
but it is probably from late –early . ZSA, P--. See Koch memo to
general commissars about educating Volksdeutsche about racial crimes and punishment vis-à-vis the Jews,  May , ZSA, P--.
Hoffmeyer report,  Oct. , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
RKU circular memo to all Reich German youth leaders, kindergarten teachers, and
kindergarten aides on goals of work in Ukraine,  Sept. , CSA, Kiev, -, microfilm at USHMM, RG .M, reel . Commissariat and NSV officials
actively promoted a Lutheran church in Zhytomyr where Pastor Lemke preached
about obedience to Hitler. See report of  Mar. , ZSA, P--.
For an insightful analysis of Reich women sent to Poland, see Harvey, ‘‘Die
Deutsche Frau im Osten,’’ –.
Stadtkommissar IIa to VoMi Zhytomyr,  Feb. , ZSA, P--.
Behrens to SD Berdychiv regarding Herbert Hafke,  Apr. , ZSA, P--.
The official ration amounts were published in the ‘‘Verordnungsblatt,’’  Feb.
, CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
See Wedelstadt order of  Apr. , ZSA, P--.
See VoMi memo about ration cards and shops from late Dec.  to early ,
ZSA, P--.
Stumpp’s representative in Zhytomyr, Erdmann, reported on Volksdeutsche activities there,  Apr. , CSA, Kiev, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel
. Ethnic German perks included a Black Sea resort trip for training in trades and
tours of the Reich; NA, RG , T-/R /–.
See Himmler Decree,  Dec. , NA, RG , T-/R /. See VoMi (undated) memo (in a – file) about plans for the Soviet Union, which states that
‘‘in essence the financing of the resettlement will come from the confiscated property of those foreign peoples being pushed out.’’ NA, RG ,T-/R /.
Commander Karl von Roques ordered the ethnic Germans be given better homes
and supplies available from vacated Jewish homes and local ‘‘plunder’’ depots.
Order of Commander Occupied Rear Army South,  Aug. , NA, RG ,
T-/R /. See NSV ‘‘tasks’’ under the district commissars, ‘‘IV. Vorläufige
Aufgaben,’’ regarding ‘‘Judennachlass,’’ CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG .M, reel , p. .
According to Koch’s office, the SS-commissar, or SS-Gebietshauptmann, was a
Himmler appointee, but was still part of the district commissariat administration,
 Dec. . ZSA, Pc--. Himmler named Otto Jungkunz (b. ) the Ge-
Notes to Pages 170–72







bietskommissar of Hegewald. Jungkunz joined the Nazi Party in , worked in
the mayor’s office in Göttingen, and was the station commissioner at Hegewald
before being appointed Gebietskommissar in the fall of .
After a meeting with Hitler on  July, Himmler hosted a dinner at Hegewald; he
brought up the topic of the Volksdeutsche, speaking rather sincerely about his plans
for them, and then switched suddenly to the issue of the partisan menace. Himmler’s discussion after the Hitler meeting described in the statement of Franz Razesberger,  Jan. , BAL,  AR-Z /, –.
See Jochmann, ed., Die Monologe im Führerhauptquartier, . The notes from this
meeting at Werwolf are undated, but on  Aug.  Himmler was at Hitler’s
bunker with most of the individuals named in the conference notes, and the meeting that followed this one at Hegewald on  Aug. concerned the implementation
of programs that had been decided the previous day at the Werwolf bunker. Participants in the Werwolf conference about Volksdeutsche were Himmler’s chief of
personal staff, Karl Wolff; the VoMi director, Werner Lorenz; HSSPF Russland-Süd
Hans Prützmann; the SS liaison to Omi, Gottlob Berger; the chief of RKF, Ulrich
Greifelt; State Secretary in the Interior Ministry and SS Major General Wilhelm
Stuckart; Generalplan Ost designer Prof. Dr. Konrad Meyer; and possibly HSSPF
Gerret Korsemann. The file notes from the ‘‘Besprechung im Führerhauptquartier’’
are in NA, RG , T-/R /–. In Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers, the
Himmler-Hitler meeting of  Aug.  is identified on pp. –.
Himmler memo to Gottlob Berger about the incompetence of Rosenberg’s commissars regarding the ethnic Germans, Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /
. Hitler gave the SS control over partisan warfare in the civilian occupied
zones with directive # on  Aug. ; NA, RG  -PS. Himmler appointed
Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski SS plenipotentiary for antipartisan warfare in the
East at the end of Oct. ; NA, RG  NO-. See Dallin, German Rule in Russia, –.
Conference notes from Hitler headquarters, NA, RG , T-/R /–
. On Hitler’s remarks about Germanizing Ukraine, see Dallin, German Rule in
Russia, . Additional material about the formation of Hegewald is in NA, RG ,
NO-; CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel ;
NA, RG , T-/R /, T-/R /.
Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania, –, –. See Zentralstelle Dortmund gegen Dr. Siebert und andere, BAL,  Js /, and Dalia Ofer, ‘‘The Holocaust in
Transnistria,’’ in The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, ed. Dobroszycki and Gurock, –
.
See Oelhafen order about the Selbstschutz,  July , RGVA, Moscow -, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel . For the Selbstschutz in
Ukraine and Transnistria, see meeting notes, NA, RG , T-/R /–.
On restricting ethnic German police and translators to settlements in the promo-
 Notes to Pages 172–73











tion of ethnic German marriages, see Commander of the Order Police for Ukraine
Bomhard order of  Sept. , ZSA, P--.
By comparison, there were sixteen Selbstschutz schools in Transnistria, which
trained , men. See undated report, NA, RG , T-/R /.
See Himmler letter to Berger, insisting on his control over the ethnic Germans in
Russia, Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
Rosenberg’s response to Himmler’s order to Koch,  Sept. , NA, RG ,
T-/R /, .
On paper Rosenberg won this battle. It seems that Hitler desired a decentralization
of ethnic German politics and resettlement actions, and he also may have wanted
to further the Party’s role by ordering (during a meeting at Vinnytsia with Himmler,
Koch, Prützmann, Koch’s deputy Paul Dargel, and Hoffmeyer) that ‘‘the arrangement of all folk and German questions happen in RKU exclusively through the
General and Gebietskommissar.’’ At the same time Hitler ordered that within the
major stronghold of ethnic Germans, specifically at Korosten’, Hegewald, Vinnytsia, Halbstadt, and Kronau, the SS should appoint the district commissars. On Hitler decisions from the meeting of  Oct. , see Dargel’s notes dated  Oct.
, CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
Theo Henschel (b.  Feb. , Schlesien). He joined the Nazi Party in  and became a district propaganda leader and SA man. In Dec. , after a few years in the
Race and Resettlement Office (RuSHA), he was appointed by Himmler to the latter’s
personal staff of the RKFDV. Prior to his assignment in Zhytomyr, Henschel led one
of the three RuSHA task forces in the  invasion of Poland, organized the seizure
of industries around Lodz, and was chief of the SS-Bodenamt in Danzig–West Prussia. See Heinemann, ‘‘Rasse, Siedlung, Deutsches Blut,’’ –. See Theo Henschel SS
Personnel File, NA, RG , Berlin Document Center Records, A-, SSO-AA. I am grateful to Isabel Heinemann for providing me with a copy of this file.
R.-D. Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg, document appendix, –.
Heinemann, ‘‘Rasse, Siedlung, Deutsches Blut,’’ –.
Dallin, German Rule in Russia, . Dallin misdated the resettlement to Hegewald,
perhaps confusing it with the Nov. action in Cherniakhiv (Neuborn).
See NSV, ‘‘Lagebericht for East,’’ with plans for an Ovruch action,  Sept. ,
CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
See Standartenführer Henschel report on Hegewald action, given at the resettlement commission meeting with representatives of the general commissar staff,
NSV, SSPF, and VoMi on  Nov. , ZSA, P--.
Himmler had sent an earlier memo to Pohl and Lorenz about supplying for Christmas all the major Volksdeutsche settlements (Hegewald, Transnistria, Halbstadt
[Dnipropetrovs’k], Korets’, Nikolaev, and Lublin) with items from depots in Lublin
and Auschwitz. See Himmler order of  Oct. , NA, RG , NO- and
T-/R /. For a subsequent memo of  Oct. requesting that the ethnic
Notes to Pages 173–77








Germans in Hegewald receive an immediate shipment of wares, see Witte et al.,
eds., Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers, –.
This was ‘‘according to Koch’s Oct. decree on the granting of property to ethnic
Germans who have been classified in the German People’s List under categories
one, two, and three.’’ Koch order of  Oct. . Zhytomyrshchyna v period, document #, .
General Commissar Leyser memo of  Nov. , Zhytomyrshchyna v period, document #, –. The original is to be found in ZSA, P--.
On Kiev settlers sent to Hegewald, making ‘‘this area fully settled,’’ see Leyser,
‘‘Lagebericht,’’ Mar.–Apr. , ZSA, P--. Also see Dallin, German Rule in Russia, . For the increase in the geographic area of Hegewald, see the RKU survey of
the ‘‘Generalbezirk Shitomir,’’  Jan. , CSA, Kiev, microfilm held at USHMM,
RG .M, reel .
The SS agricultural leaders were drawn from the ranks of the Order Police and
RuSHA. Henschel and RuSHA chief Tesseraux met at Hegewald on  Sept.  to
plan for these police and economic posts. They specified that the SS men posted in
Hegewald be older men with experience in agriculture (about thirty or forty men).
See meeting notes from  Sept.  meeting and a Henschel memo of  Oct.
 in Theo Henschel SS Personnel File, NA, RG , Berlin Document Center
Records, A SSO-A-A. Also see Heinemann, ‘‘Rasse, Siedlung, Deutsches Blut,’’
.
There was also a teacher training school in Novohrad-Volyns’kyi, June–July ;
ZSA, P--.
See instructions for the rally of  Mar. , ZSA, P--. A smaller festival
occurred at the beginning of May. See Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung (Luts’k),  May ,
p. , Library of Congress, newspaper microfilm . Paul Dargel was the deputy
to Erich Koch and was later assigned to Bormann as a liaison officer with the Vlasov Army. Reitlinger, The House Built on Sand, .
A Nazi Party district leader in Zhytomyr, Maria Cormann, complained that the
Volksdeutsche rations were as poor as those allotted to the local prisoners. See
the comparison of ethnic German and non-German rations in Cormann report of
 Oct. , CSA, Kiev, microfilm in USHMM, RG .M, reel .
Chapter Eight
 This development is examined extensively in Jan Gross’s Polish Society under German
Occupation, an early work in this area of research.
 Leyser tried to formalize religious structures for the entire commissariat under the
leadership of three bishops, two in Vinnytsia and one in Zhytomyr; ‘‘Lagebericht,’’
Mar.–Apr. , ZSA, P--. See General Commissar Leyser order about the
registration of priests,  Mar. , ZSA, P--. See Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber
Kitzinger critique of  June , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
 Zviahel Gebietskommissariat, payroll list, May . Of the eighty-seven staff
 Notes to Pages 177–81










members, only seven (who were mainly Volksdeutsche) were hired during July–Dec.
. See ZSA, P--, microfilm in USHMM, Acc .A., reel .
Armstrong, ed., Soviet Partisans in World War II; Fyodorov, The Underground Committee
Carries One; Stryvozhena pam’iat’; Poltava, The Ukrainian Insurgent Army; Tys-Krokhmaliuk, UPA Warfare in Ukraine; Kohn and Roiter, A Voice from the Forest.
Weiner, Making Sense of War, .
The first Ukrainian nationalist guerrilla group was formed in Polissia under Borovets, who had had ties to the Ukrainian National Republic in –; Armstrong,
Ukrainian Nationalism, –. At Ushomir, Jews who had escaped the first massacres attacked the town from their hideout in the forest. In – small pockets
of Jewish resistance formed south of Vinnytsia. See Spector, ‘‘Jews in the Resistance,’’ –.
Andrii Mel’nyk’s people secured their base at Zhytomyr with two of his top leaders
from the Provid, Omelian Senyk and Mykola Stsibors’kyi. On  Aug.  Senyk
and Stsibors’kyi walked across a street intersection in Zhytomyr’s center and were
approached from behind by a young man. The man shot Senyk and Stsibors’kyi.
Senyk died instantly, and Stsibors’kyi ‘‘bled to death a few hours later.’’ See Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, . Apparently a Bandera agent (with German help)
carried this out.
See the OUN-B report of ‘‘Wino,’’ about members being arrested by Germans and
not returning,  Sept. , ZSA, P--.
EK order of  Nov. , in Potichnyj, ed., The UPA in Light of German Documents,
; reprinted from IMT, vol. , –.
See SD Meldungen Ost, weekly report dated  May , NA, RG , T-/R
/, and frames –.
The discovered Bandera reports were distributed to the other secret police headquarters and subcommandos of the Einsatzgruppen in L’viv, Rivne, Kiev, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Horlivka, Kremenchuk, and Dnipropetrovs’k. See Thomas report
of  Mar. , P--. According to BdS Ukraine Thomas, nationalists who
were arrested were not to be killed on the spot, but kept for questioning in order
to gather more names and information. In certain cases they were killed; if they
had played a significant leadership role, they were to be sent to RSHA in Berlin.
Thomas order of  Feb. , ZSA, P--. When Razesberger asked Thomas
what he should do with these prisoners in Apr. , Thomas replied that for the
time being they should be kept in a concentration camp. Thomas to Razesberger,
 Apr. , ZSA, P--.
Razesberger to SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Thomas,  Apr. , ZSA, P--.
Taras ‘‘Bulba’’ Borovets was a native of Volyn; he established the first police units
in the German administration in Olevs’k; both Borovets and ‘‘his men’’ (auxiliary
Ukrainian police) from Olevs’k went underground in Nov.  and later formed
one of the first nationalist partisan groups. Potichnyj, ed., The UPA in Light of German Documents, , .
Notes to Pages 182–83

 See General Commissar Klemm reports about partisan attacks,  Dec. , ZSA,
P-, and  Dec. , ZSA, P--.
 Before Nov. , they had worked secretly with the Borovets faction and his ‘‘Freikorps,’’ which fought against the Soviets in the northeast areas of Ukraine between
Zhytomyr and Kiev. On Borovets-German ‘‘relations,’’ see the SD report of  May
, NA, RG , T-/R /–.
 Roques memo to civilian authorities,  Nov. , ZSA, P--.
 Klemm order,  Dec. , ZSA, P--.
 In Feb.  Himmler’s command staff cabled that the Pripiat’ marsh area had to
be subdued with all force, using a combination of Waffen-SS and military units.
 Feb. , MHI, Prague, Var-SS B. Statement of Hans Leberecht von Bredow,
former commander of the gendarmerie for the Zhytomyr region,  May , Kohlmorgen Case, BAL, Sta Braunschweig  Js /. Thanks to Konrad Kwiet for
these documents.
 See the ‘‘Kommandobefehl’’ from the gendarme chief of the region about the vulnerability of police during patrols of fields and forests,  June , ZSA, P-. A reporting section on partisan attacks was introduced in the biweekly and
monthly reports at the end of June; see report of  June , ZSA, P--.
For partisan attacks in the spring of , such as the Soviet POWs’ sabotage of
factory work, see Commissar Klemm’s ‘‘Lagebericht,’’  June , Bundesarchiv
Koblenz, R/. Additional attacks are described in the Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber report of  June , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
 German policy toward captured partisans reflected their defined categories of racial
and political enemies. When the SD began its manhunts against nationalist infiltrators, SS-Brigadeführer Max Thomas asked that partisans be searched and questioned before they were killed. But in early June, when the Germans were conducting thorough cleansing actions of the forest to find and kill Jews in hiding, and
when Soviet partisans had begun to murder German officials in El’sk and Bragin,
Zhytomyr’s commander of the gendarmerie ordered in June  that male bandits and ‘‘riffraff ’’ in the forests be shot on the spot. See BdS Thomas, Kiev order
to SD chief of Zhytomyr, Razesberger,  Mar. , ZSA, P--; KdG Zhytomyr orders,  June , Minsk collection --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel ; KdG Zhytomyr order,  July , ZSA, P--.
 Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, .
 Zhytomyr’s German Security Police chief, Franz Razesberger, and his subordinates
gained substantial information by interrogating a captured Soviet partisan named
Leontii Onagrov. He ‘‘confessed’’ that around Zhytomyr the Soviet partisans were
formed into cells and situated at Deveshyn, Chudniv, Myropil, Baranivka, and Romanivka and on the Luts’k-Zhytomyr border at Shepetivka. See the memorandum
of SD chief Razesberger’s office to the commander of the gendarmerie at Zhytomyr,  Apr. , ZSA, P--.
 Razesberger report of – July , MHI, Prague, Var-SS B . I am grateful to
 Notes to Pages 183–84












Konrad Kwiet for this document, as well as many others from the Prague archive.
For additional attacks, see SD Meldungen Ost,  Aug. ,  Aug. ,  Aug.
, and  Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R /–, –, ,
and –. The Soviets established one of the larger and more significant airfields at Lel’chytsi in Mar. . See Kosyk, The Third Reich and Ukraine, .
Franz Razesberger Statement of  Jan. , Case against Razesberger, BAL, 
AR-Z /, Band III, . Witte et al., eds., Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers, –
.
German and Ukrainian police seized three different Soviet leaflets in Vasilevichi.
The first one was a military update about how the Germans had been defeated on
the northern front; the second was addressed to the ‘‘Peoples of the Occupied Territories,’’ and stated that the Red Army was pushing out the fascist bands and that
‘‘all the free Soviet peoples watch over you. . . . [A]s the Germans are pushed back
they are destroying  km stretches of fields; it is your duty to preserve the grain
and protect it from German destruction. Take weapons in your hands, go to the partisans, and destroy the enemy in the rear. Do not forget that your fathers, brothers,
and men shed their blood for you in battle. Death to the fascists! Your independence
lives!’’ See the Razesberger report of  Aug.  to Thomas regarding events
of  July  at Vasilevichi, MHI, Prague, Var-SS B. For Himmler order about
changing terminology, see ‘‘Kommandobefehl’’ of  Aug. , ZSA, P--.
Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, . Hitler directive #,  Aug. , in Dallin, German
Rule in Russia, .
SD Meldungen Ost,  Feb. , NA, RG , T-/R /, .
On the Prützmann report, see Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, . On Himmler’s approach, see NA, RG , T-/R /. For the local escalation resulting
in more incidents of civilian deaths, see Hellwig SSPF Zhytomyr report to all gendarme posts in region,  Jan. , ZSA, P--.
Stryvozhena pam’iat’, –.
Leyser, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’ Mar.–Apr. , ZSA, P--.
Commander of the gendarmerie of Zhytomyr, report of  Nov. , ZSA, P-.
SD report from the East,  Jan. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
SD report from the East,  Feb. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
The Germans were unable to distinguish among the different Soviet commanders and their units in Zhytomyr. Although Kovpak’s were the most well known, in
Zhytomyr additional Soviet units were commanded by A. H. Saburov, A. F. Fedorov,
M. I. Nauma, B. A. Karasev, I. I. Shitov, and A. M. Grabchak. Soviet and Ukrainian
sources also describe a Czech and Polish detachment. See Stryvozhena pam’iat’, .
On movements of Kovpak’s units around Zhytomyr, Operation Nixe (Mermaid)
and Soviet southern forces under Saburov, Mar.–Apr. , see the SD Meldungen
Ost from this period, NA, RG , T-/R /, , ,
–, . Mel’nichenko was discovered by the Gestapo in Dec. ;
Notes to Pages 185–86







see Gestapo chief Müller (Berlin) message to Himmler (Hegewald) on  Dec. ,
NA, RG , T-/R /–. On Müller’s memo to Rattenhuber (then
promoted to SS-Oberführer) about Soviet agents in the Werwolf compound, dated
 July , see Z arkhiviv VuChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB / , –, in the Vinnytsia
Oblast Archive, P--, , microfilm in USHMM, RG .M, reel . After
the war, Rattenhuber was interrogated by the KGB and evidently died in Soviet captivity. I am gratetul to Vadim Altskan for providing and translating the Ukrainian
text.
Germans placed the nationalist (OUN-B) partisans around Vinnytsia, Berdychiv,
and smaller towns like Koziatyn. Bandera leaders also tried to organize the movement in Ovruch; SD report,  Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
An OUN-B supporter with leaflets, a worker named Boris Zhumenii, was arrested
in Ruzhyn at the beginning of Sept. . SS and police district event report for
Ruzhyn, ZSA, P--. An official from the RKU capital, Rivne, who traveled
to Vinnytsia learned that two villages outside the city were totally controlled by
Banderites; see the report of Professor von Grünberg (IIg),  Sept. , CSA,
Kiev, --, microfilm at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
See Weiner, Making Sense of War, –. See Snyder, ‘‘The Causes of UkrainianPolish Ethnic Cleansing.’’
Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, .
For the rise of UPA and a more favorable account of the Bandera faction, see Kosyk,
The Third Reich and Ukraine. Of the roughly , fighters in the UPA, fewer than
, were active in Zhytomyr in early .
This was representative of a change in OUN-B principles and policies, which moved
toward more ethnic tolerance and democratic ideals. See the resolutions of the
Second Congress from Feb.  and the Third Extraordinary Congress from Aug.
, in Kosyk, The Third Reich and Ukraine, , . As the Germans evacuated the
eastern districts of the Zhytomyr region in Nov. , the OUN-UPA held a secret
conference ‘‘of the oppressed peoples of Eastern Europe and Asia’’ in Zhytomyr’s
northwestern forests; see Kosyk, The Third Reich and Ukraine, .
The Germans began to realize how crucial the elders were to the partisan cause
when they investigated the partisan movement in the summer of . They found
that at the lowest levels, where the Germans were absent, the partisans were able
to survive off the land and in the forests with the cooperation of the elders and
local population; the Germans also learned that some Ukrainian leaders were sabotaging German policies by deliberately mistranslating German orders. See orders
of the commander of the gendarmerie, Zhytomyr, on fighting the partisans, demanding loyalty from auxiliaries, and threatening locals who support the partisans,
Belarus State Archive (Minsk), --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG M,
reel . Regarding Ukrainian mistranslation of German orders, see the  Aug. 
Hauptmannschaftsbefehl Berdichev, RGVA, Moscow --, microfilm held
at USHMM, RG .M, reel .

Notes to Pages 186–87
. Soviet order of Commander Sergeev, chief of the Partisan Movement in the Territories Temporarily Occupied by the Germans,  Aug. , in Soviet Partisans in World
War II, ed. Armstrong, .
. Leontii Antonovich Kozaritskii, interview by author,  May , Zhytomyr State
Archives, Zhytomyr, Ukraine.
. SS and police district leader of Koziatyn, logs of killed Schutzmänner, Nov. ,
ZSA, P--.
. Leyser to Rosenberg,  June , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
. General Commissar Leyser, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’ Mar.–Apr. , ZSA, P--.
. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, .
. See Leyser memo to all commissars and SSPF Zhytomyr about Koch’s instructions,
 Mar. , ZSA, P--. For Leyser’s critique and Himmler’s response, see
 June , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
. Leyser, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’ Mar.–Apr. , ZSA, P--. The commissars were also
becoming suspicious of SS economic enterprises that placed more demands on
their resources. In Novohrad-Volyns’kyi the district commissar’s office initially refused to provide laborers for the SS-acquired porcelain factory at Horodnytsia, until
the Higher SS and Police Leader Prützmann pressured General Commissar Leyser.
See records of local SS-operated industries—for example, SS porcelain factories in
Berdychiv, Korosten’, and Olevs’k—ZSA, P-- and P--.
 See the Hitler and Keitel decree on awards for ‘‘eastern peoples,’’  July , ZSA,
P--.
 On premiums to locals who assisted in partisan warfare, see memorandum from
Koch’s Department of Food and Agriculture, Rivne,  Aug. , RGVA, Moscow
--, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel . This program was
part of Hitler’s commissioning Himmler with the task of destroying partisans by
the end of the year through the harshest punitive methods and local reward programs. See Rosenberg instructions to RKU and RKO (Reichskommissariat Ostland),  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R / MR  /, T-/R /.
 Gendarme Commander of Zhytomyr, ‘‘Kommandobefehl,’’ Nr. /, (?) Oct.
, ZSA, P--.
 See General Commissar Leyser to Reichsminister Rosenberg,  Feb. , NA, RG
, T-/R /–; also in NA, RG , NO-.
 Leyser speech on the occasion of Rosenberg’s Vinnytsia visit,  June , NA, RG
, reel A, frame –.
 On the nominations by the gendarme leader of Samhorodok, Richter, see the memo
dated  May , ZSA, P--. Lists of Schutzmänner commendations and
awards are found in ZSA, P--.
 Statements of Schutzmann Ivan Koval’skii and of La-Führer Martin Lemke,
SSPgebF Koziatyn interrogations,  Oct. , ZSA, P--.
 En route, she and other laborers were provided with some hay, one kilogram of
bread, one sausage, and no water, enough food for two or three days, but the trip
Notes to Pages 187–91











lasted five to nine days. During Atamanskaia’s journey, she recalled, the train sometimes came to an abrupt halt, and one could hear shots fired at those who tried
to flee. Maria Atamanskaia, interview by author,  May , Zhytomyr, Ukraine;
Report of SD Chief Kiev to SD Commander Ukraine, June , NA, RG ,
T-/R /MR. Also see the Ruzhyn SS and police district leader’s activity report about a woman and child shot while trying to jump from a forced-labor train,
 Feb. , ZSA, P--.
When suspects fled, German investigations began by bringing in the suspects’
wives and girlfriends; often a partisan or deserter would go to a girlfriend’s house
to seek shelter. See Ruzhyn SSPgebF activity reports, particularly  Oct. , ZSA,
P--, and  Aug.– Dec. , ZSA, P--; also in SD Meldungen Ost
of  Mar. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
SS-police in Ruzhyn arrested Nastia Semerchuk, the wife of a suspected partisan.
After German and Ukrainian police tortured her, she was returned to her cell. Ukrainian guards later found her dead in the cell; she had hanged herself with a piece
of clothing. See Ruzhyn SSPgebF, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’ Nov. , ZSA, P--.
See Moshovskii ‘‘Announcement’’ of  Aug. , ZSA, P--. Any native police auxiliaries who refused to carry out attacks against partisans were also to be
shot on the spot by the leader of the unit, a fellow auxiliary, or, if necessary, by a
German gendarme official. The gendarme chief in Mazyr wrote that in accordance
with Himmler’s commission to fight partisans in Ukraine, the Ukrainian police
also had to serve in the fight; SSPF Hellwig ordered that if members of a family
assisted the bandits, then the entire family was to be killed. See file from Belarus
State Archives (Minsk), --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel .
From SSPF Koziatyn, Behrens, daily partisan attack reports,  Aug. , ZSA,
P--. Also see activity report from the SS and police chief at Ruzhyn,  Feb.
, in which he reported that they had captured another woman supplying food
to partisans in Pohrebyshche; ZSA, P--. See the Sept.  partisan activity
report of SSPF Behrens, Koziatyn, ZSA, P--.
In Aug.  a Soviet partisan battalion swept through the district of Olevs’k killing Schutzmänner and their families, along with village elders and their wives and
children; in one village near El’sk, Stalin’s agents shot all the inhabitants. SD Meldungen Ost, report of  Sept. , NA, RG , T-/R /, –.
SD Meldungen Ost,  Mar. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
Nechama Tec, Resilience and Courage, –, –.
Koziatyn SS and police district leader files, Kondratenko Case, July–Aug. , ZSA,
P--.
There may have been more persons in this group, perhaps fifty, but in the raid the
Germans battled with twelve men. See Ruzhyn partisan warfare log entry of  Aug.
 and report of  Aug. , ZSA, P--. Jewish members of the resistance were concentrated around Vinnytsia.
The assassination was followed by ‘‘Aktion Richter,’’ massive reprisals against addi-
 Notes to Pages 191–93











tional ‘‘suspects’’ on  Aug. . Behrens, SS and police leader Koziatyn district,
daily reports of partisan attacks, ZSA, P--.
The wartime and postwar fate of Kondratenko remains mysterious; her records are
not among the KGB archives files in Zhytomyr. Possible surviving family members
from Koziatyn could not be identified through telephone listings and inquiries in
.
See Commissar Leyser, ‘‘Lagebericht’’ about partisan warfare and peasant women
who live in dirt holes, Mar.–Apr. , ZSA, P--, .
See Leyser memorandum, ‘‘Bolschewistische Grausamkeiten,’’  Mar. , ZSA,
P--.
Besides the trip to Germany, winners were also given an increased food ration for
six months. Leyser Propaganda Plan,  Mar. , ZSA, P--.
Leyser, ‘‘Propagandistische Auswertung der Winnizär Morde,’’  July , ZSA,
P--. Testimony of Iakov Arsent’evich Sheptur, Vinnytsia,  Jan. , BAL,
 AR-Z /, Band III, –. Sheptur presented the Soviet version of the mass
graves, stating that the bodies were from Nazi massacres of , but the account
of City Commissar for Vinnytsia Margenfeld corresponds with the German records
of  and Rosenberg’s report. See Amtliches Material zum Massenmord vom Winniza.
Quoted from Weiner, Making Sense of War, , who translated it from the  July
 issue of Vinnyts’ki visti. On the politics of the regional religious leaders from
the Orthodox, Uniate, and Catholic Churches, see Berkhoff, ‘‘Was There a Religious
Revival . . . ?’’ General Commissar Klemm reported on the factious politicking of
the churches in his Situation Report of  June , Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R/.
A Nazi Party official who met with the commissars found the persistence of antiUkrainian ‘‘colonial’’ rhetoric alongside the fictitious propaganda themes very
striking. He also observed that the commissars complained often that one could
not give anything to ‘‘these Ukrainians because they do not appreciate it’’ (!); see
report from  June , NA, RG , T-/R /–.
Himmler proposed an evacuation plan as early as  Feb. , after the Stalingrad
defeat and about the time when SS armored units began to evacuate from Kharkiv,
which first fell to the Russians on  Feb. But major evacuation action plans were
not put into effect until late summer. See Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries, .
There were also some personnel changes in late . Henschel was replaced with
a new SS director of resettlement named Laforce, and a new NSV leader named
Butgereit was brought in to assist Karl Kersten, NSV chief in Zhytomyr.
R.-D. Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg und die deutsche Siedlungspolitik,  (document #).
By Apr. , when the ethnic Germans in Olevs’k, Pulin, Romanov, and other
neighboring districts had been classified, almost half of the population fell into
the third category; they had partial German blood (from mixed marriages) but
were deemed capable of Germanization. About , ethnic Germans from Pidluby and Barashi were also rapidly resettled. See Leyser, ‘‘Lagebericht,’’ Mar.–Apr.
, ZSA, P--.
Notes to Pages 193–97

 During  Cherniakhiv became the largest ethnic German enclave in the region with , Volksdeutsche, eight kindergartens, and fifty-one schools. General
Commissar Leyser declared it an official SS ethnic German settlement (under SS
Oberführer Tschimpke). Försterstadt was formed out of the combined ethnic German villages of Zviahel, Pulin, Korosten’, and Horoshki; see Leyser order,  Sept.
, ZSA, P--. The ethnic German population of Hegewald was ,, according to report of  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
 NSV leaders complained that they could not find enough homes and facilities to
house the  new orphans. See report of  Sept. , CSA, Kiev, --,
microfilm held at USHMM, RG .M, reel . The figure of  orphans is from
the VoMi (Zhytomyr) report of  Aug. , NA, RG , T-/R /; DVL
applications were announced over the radio, as was a call for all ethnic German
boys between fourteen and twenty-one to join the Hitler Youth; see schedule of announcements,  Feb. , ZSA, P--.
 Heinemann, ‘‘Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut,’’ .
 There were a total of three Volksdeutsche shops in the city of Zhytomyr; they lacked
goods, however, and were poorly managed. See Schwager report of  June ,
ZSA, P--.
 See Leyser memo to district commissars and labor commissions,  Oct. , ZSA,
P--.
 See the accounts of partisan attacks in Jan.–Feb.  in which the ethnic Germans were highlighted as a partisan target in the Ruzhyn SS and police district
leader files, ZSA, P--. Volksdeutsche were moved to Cherniakhiv in early 
from northern areas ‘‘under pressure from partisan warfare’’ according to Leyser’s
‘‘Lagebericht’’ of Mar.–Apr. . In a raid on Hegewald on  May , thirty partisans robbed the SS shop and stole vehicles; another attack on  May  occurred north of Hegewald in Mazyr. See CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at
USHMM, RG .M, reel . Additional reports of partisan attacks against ethnic
Germans are in ZSA, P--. Three hundred partisans attacked ethnic German
villages at Zviahel and killed ten ethnic Germans; NA, RG , T-/R /–
. Ethnic Germans were also killed in Haisyn, which was an overnight stopover
for a trek coming from Halbstadt (Dnipropetrovs’k). The Selbstschutz took revenge on a nearby village; see the HSSPF Prützmann report of  Nov. , NA, RG
T-/R /–.
 See Z arkhiviv VuChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB / , –. Jewish refugees did not
form their own resistance movement; they lacked the weapons, having no guns,
only some knives. In July  many joined the Lenin detachment of the Stalin Brigade, which contained a ‘‘Jewish’’ unit led by David Mudrik. See Vinokurova et al.,
Katastrofa (Shoa) i soprotivlenie / pod obshchei redaktsiei, . I am grateful to Vadim Altskan for this reference and assistance with the translation. Thanks to Ms. Vinokurova for confirming additional details in her correspondence.
 Notes to Pages 197–99








Chapter Nine
Khaim Borisovich testimony in Berdichevskaia tragediia, ed. Elisavetskii, . I am
grateful to Asya Vaisman for translating the Russian text into English.
SD Berdychiv, monthly activity report for Sept. , ZSA, P--.
In Zhytomyr, the ethnic German guards were assigned to SS grenadier training battalion . They were placed along the stream called the Hegebach that ran from
Himmler’s compound to the airport; the compound was destroyed in part by this
battalion, which fell under the command of Kampfkommandant Zhytomyr Generalmajor Strack. Other ethnic German members of battalion  were placed on
Kiev Street, the main road between Zhytomyr and Kiev on which the Red Army was
advancing. See report of Jungkunz to Himmler’s personal staff about the evacuation of Zhytomyr,  Nov. , NA, RG , T-/R /–. In the
evacuation of Berdychiv on  Dec. , ethnic German factory chiefs were ordered to remain in industries that provided for the army. NA, RG , T-/R
/.
The telegram is dated  Nov., but it states that the massacre was on  Nov.
; see Prützmann telegram to Himmler at Wolfsburg, NA, RG , T-/R
/.
See the RKU report of  Nov. , CSA, Kiev, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel , folder . The ethnic Germans in these treks were largely women
and children; in the summer of  Hitler and Himmler waged an aggressive campaign to draft ethnic German men into the army and Waffen-SS. See Hitler decree
on the granting of German citizenship to those foreigners of German descent who
were serving in the army, Waffen-SS, and Organization Todt. Ethnic Germans in
Ukraine who resided there on  June  and fell into the first two categories of
the German List were also granted German citizenship and were to be drafted. Hitler decree of  May  in CSA, Kiev, --, microfilm held at USHMM, RG
.M, reel . In July  Himmler ordered that ethnic German men in Ukraine
be assigned to the Waffen-SS; Himmler asked Prützmann to make sure that the
, trained men in the Selbstschutz be drafted not into the army but rather into
the Waffen-SS. NA, RG , T-/R /.
Report of SS Chief Jungkunz at Hegewald,  Nov.– Nov. , NA, RG ,
T-/R /–. Abschlussbericht, Case against Friedrich Becker (SS and
police Berdychiv), BAL,  AR-Z / IV, –. Also see evacuation measures, memoranda from Nov.  in ZSA, P--, P--; ‘‘Räumungsbericht des Gebietskommissariats Koziatyn,’’  Nov.– Dec. , NA, RG ,
T-/R /–; ‘‘Räumungsmassnahmen,’’ th Panzerarmee, Berdychiv,
 Dec. , NA, RG , T-/R /.
Doris Bergen, ‘‘The Volksdeutsche of Eastern Europe and the Collapse of the Nazi
Empire, –,’’ in The Impact of Nazism, ed. Rogers and Steinweis, .
It is not known how many among these ethnic Germans originated from Zhyto-
Notes to Pages 200–201












myr. Fleischhauer, ‘‘The Ethnic Germans under Nazi Rule,’’ in Fleischhauer and
Pinkus, The Soviet Germans: Past and Present, . For the horrendous conditions of
the evacuations, with mention of the Hegewald trek, see Harvey, Women and the Nazi
East, . See also Ther and Siljak, eds., Redrawing Nations.
Berdychiv was liberated on  Jan. , whereas the struggle over Vinnytsia lasted
until  Mar. . The Soviets’ First Ukrainian Front led the Zhytomyr-Berdychiv
assault on  Dec. and defeated the Germans’ Fourth and First Panzer armies.
The four Soviet fronts that swept through the region had ‘‘twenty-one combined
armies, three tank, and four air armies totalling ,, men, , guns and
mortars, , tanks and self-propelled gun mounts and about , combat airplanes.’’ Great Soviet Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘‘Right Bank Ukraine,’’ :.
Ivan Shynal’skii, interview by author,  May , Zhytomyr, Ukraine.
BdO Ukraine, Polizeischulungsleiter,  Aug. , ZSA, P--a.
Ukraïns’ke Slovo (Zhytomyr),  Sept. , ZSA, Newspaper Collection.
The Zhytomyr Commissariat employed about , Ukrainian policemen in Dec.
 (, in mobile battalions, , in the cities, and , in the countryside).
ZSA, --.
For the death toll in the Zhytomyr Oblast, which was , persons, see ZSA,
P--, pp. –. The Vinnytsia figure is from Weiner, Making Sense of War, .
Weiner, Making Sense of War, –.
Quoted from ibid., .
Golbert, ‘‘Holocaust Sites in Ukraine,’’ .
For a brief analysis of contemporary Ukraine in light of its colonial and totalitarian history, see Motyl, Dilemmas of Independence.
Golbert, ‘‘Holocaust Sites in Ukraine,’’ .

Notes to Pages 201–7
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Index
Africa, , , –, , –
Agricultural leaders (La-Führer), , 
Alsdorf, Ludwig, –
Alvensleben, Ludolf von, 
Aly, Götz, 
Anti-Semitism, –, ; propaganda
for, –, , , , , ;
and Orthodox Church, , –;
of Ukrainian nationalists, –,
–; Reichenau memo on JudeoBolshevism, –; onset of genocide, –; in SS-police, –,
–, , –; postwar, –
Antonescu, Ion, 
Arbeitserziehungslager, , 
Arendt, Hannah, 
Army Group South Rear Area Administration. See Rear Army Group Area
South
Artamanen, 
Atamanskaia, Maria, –
Auschwitz, 
Autobahn. See Highways
Babi Yar, , , , 
Bach-Zelewski, Erich von dem, 
Bahmann, Johann, 
Bandera, Stepan, , –, –, 
Bazar, , , 
Behrens, Heinrich, –, 
Belorussia, , , , 
Berdychiv, –, ; military invasion
of, ; camps in, , ; Holocaust
in, –, , , –; German
administration of, –, ; in-
doctrination of police in, ; Nazi
evacuation of, 
Bergen, Doris, 
Berkhoff, Karel, , , 
Bilopil’e, 
Black markets, –
Black Misha, 
Black Sea Germans, 
Blobel, Paul, , –, –, 
Blümel, Paul, 
Bogun’ia, 
Bordellos, –
Borisovich, Khaim, 
Bormann, Martin, , 
Borovets, Taras, , 
Bragin, 
Bredow, Hans Leberecht von, , 
Brown, Kathryn, 
Brown File, 
Cherniakhiv, , , , , 
Christoffel, Franz, 
Chudniv, , 
Clausewitz, Carl von, 
Collective farms, 
Collectivization, 
Colonialist ideology, –, –, , ,
, , , –; and onset of
genocide, 
Colonial School for Women (Rendsburg), 
Commissariat (German administration),
; establishment of, –, –
; Ukrainian policies of, –;
and conflicts with SS-police, –;
and Holocaust, –; and partisan
warfare, –
Commissar Order, 
Consee, Ernst, 
Daghani, Arnold, –
Dallin, Alexander, , 
Daluege, Kurt, , 
Dargel, Paul, 
Darré, R. Walther, , 
‘‘Dead zones,’’ , , 
Decision-making, , –, , 
District leaders. See Rayonchefs.
Dnipropetrovs’k, 
Dulags, , , 
Durchgangsstrassen. See Highways
DVL. See German People’s List
Dzerzhyns’k, 
Economic issues, –, 
Educational policies, –, 
Eichenhain, –, 
Eicke, Theodore, 
Einsatzgruppe C, , , –, ,
–, , , 
Einsatzkommandos  and , , , ,
, 
El’sk, 
Emil’chyne, 
Epp, Franz Ritter von, 
Ethnic Germans. See Volksdeutsche
Evacuations, –
Feierabend, Dr., , 
Firma Dohrmann, 
Firma Massenberg-Essen, 
First SS-Brigade, , –, , 
Fischer, Fritz, 
Foresters, 
Försterstadt, , 
Fotii, Bishop (Tymoshchuk), 
 Index
Frankel’, Eva Abramovna, 
Fruechte, Hans, 
Geheime Feldpolizei, , , 
Gendarmes, –, 
Generalkommissariat, –
Generalplan Ost, , 
Geopolitics, , , 
Gerlach, Christian, 
German People’s List (DVL), , ,
, 
Ghettos, , –, , 
Gieseke, Walter, 
Globocnik, Odilo, 
Glozman, Nina Borisovna, , –,
, 
Golbert, Rebecca, 
Göllner, Ernst, 
Göring, Hermann, , , , , ,
–
Goykher, Vladimir, , –
Greifelt, Ulrich, 
Grossman, Vasilii, , 
Hafke, Herbert, –
Haisyn (Gaissin), , –
Halle, Fritz, 
Harvey, Elizabeth, 
Haushofer, Karl, 
Hegewald, , –, –, –
, –; layout of SS-police
compound at,  (nn. , )
Hellwig, Otto, , , , –
Henschel, Theo, , , 
Hentschel, Willibald, –
Heydrich, Reinhard, , , , , , ,
, –
Higher SS and police leader Russia
South. See Jeckeln, Friedrich; Prützmann, Hans-Adolf
Highways (DG IV, DG V), , –
Hilberg, Raul, , 
Himka, John Paul, 
Himmler, Heinrich: in Zhytomyr (Hegewald), , , , , , , ,
; colonialist thinking of, , ,
; Germanization campaigns of,
, –, ; and management
of SS-police forces, , , , ,
, –, , ; at Werwolf
with Hitler, ; and antipartisan
warfare, , ; and evacuation of
Hegewald, –
Hitler, Adolph, , , ; view of Ukraine
and Ukrainians, , –, , ;
and imperialism, –, , , ,
; warfare policies and directives
of, , , , , , , , ,
; in Vinnytsia (Werwolf ), ,
, –, , , , , ;
assassination attempt against, 
Hnivan’, 
Hnivan’ quarry, 
Hoffmeyer, Horst, , –
Hofmann, Otto, –
Hryhorii, Bishop (Ohiichuk), , 
Huhn, Heinrich, 
Hull, Isabel, 
Hülsdünker, Alois, –
Hungarian Jewish labor, ,  (n. )
Hungarian troops, , 
Hungerpolitik, , 
Iatseniuk, –
Imperial models, , –, –, 
India, , –, 
Infantry Regiment , –
Iunitskii, Petr Ignat’evich, 
Jeckeln, Friedrich, , , –, –,
–
Jedwabne, 
Jewish Council, , 
Jews, , ; in prewar era, ; massacres of, , –, –, –,
–, , ; rescue of, , –,
, , , ; resistance of, –
, ; in hiding, ; forced labor
of, , –. See also Plundering;
Pogroms
Kam’ianets-Podil’s’kyi, 
Katyn, 
Keitel, Wilhelm, , , 
Kershaw, Ian, 
Khmil’nyk, , , , , 
Kieper, Wolf, –
Kiev, , , , , , , , 
Kiian, Iurii Alekseevich, 
Kindergarten, 
Kitzinger, Karl, , 
Kleist, Ewald von, , 
Klemm, Kurt, , ; establishes administration, –; career of in
s, ; in conflict with SS-police,
–; role of in Holocaust, ,
; and Volksdeutsche, ; and
reprisal measures, 
Klenk, Karl, –
Koch, Erich, , , , ; anti-Jewish
policies of, –, ; presence in
Ukraine of, ; directives to commissars by, –, ; meets with
Klemm, 
Kogan, Moishe, –
Kommandanturen, , , , , ,
, 
Kondratenko, Maria, –
Kordelivka, 
Körner, Hellmut, 
Korosten’, , , 
Kovpak, S., , 
Kozaritskii, Leontii Antonovich, –
Index

Koziatyn, , , , , , 
Krasnaia Gora, , 
Krasnopolka, 
Krössinsee, 
Müller, Heinrich, , 
Mulligan, Timothy, 
Munch, Lieutenant, 
Mykhailivka, –
Lammers, Heinrich, 
Landesschützenverbände (defense
units), , 
Land question, –
Latvian police, 
Leibbrandt, Georg, 
Lel’chytsi, 
Lemkin, Raphael, 
Leyser, Ernst, , , , , –,
; critique of German antipartisan warfare by, –; propaganda
campaigns of, ; departure of, 
Lindquist, Friedrich, 
Lithuanian police, 
Lityn, 
Liubar, , , 
Ludendorff, Erich, 
L’viv, , 
National Socialist People’s Welfare
Agency (NSV), , –, , 
Nazi Party, , 
Nebe, Arthur, 
Nemyriv, , 
Neumann, Arthur, , 
Novohrad-Volyns’kyi (Zviahel) , ;
Volksdeutsche in, , , ; camps
in, , ; and Holocaust, , ;
forced labor deportations from, ,
, 
NSV. See National Socialist People’s
Welfare Agency
MacKinder, Halford John, 
Magass, Fritz, , , 
Malin, 
Malinkov, C. F., , 
Marchuk, Roman, 
Margenfeld, Fritz, , , 
Markull, Field Commander, –, 
Mayrhofer, Bruno, 
Mazyr, , , , 
Medical experiments, 
Meisslein, Johann, –
Memorials, 
Mel’nyk, Andrii, , , 
Meyer, Alfred, 
Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyi, 
Moltke, Helmuth James von, 
Mosse, George, 
Müller, Erwin, –
 Index
Oelhafen, Otto von, , , 
Oemler, Gotthilf, 
Olevs’k, 
Operation Bamberg, 
Operation Barbarossa, , , , ,
, , 
Operation Tannenberg, 
Operation Weichsel, 
Order Police Battalions (nos. , ,
, ), , –, 
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
(OUN), –, –, , 
Organization Todt (OT), , , ,
, , , 
Orphanages, , 
Orthodox Church, , –, 
Ositna (SS Labor Camp), 
OUN. See Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists
Ovruch, , , 
Palamarchuk, Vasyl’, 
Panning, Gerhart, , –, , 
Partisan warfare, –, , –
Pekerman, Galina Efimovna, 
Perpetrators. See Psychology of perpetrators
Petliura, Symon, , 
Plundering, , , –, –, ,

Pogroms, , , –, , 
Pohl, Dieter, 
Pohrebyshche, 
Pokhidni grupy, –
Poland, , , , , 
Poles, , ,  (n. )
Polikarp, Bishop (Sikorsky), , –
Pomme, Kurt, 
Prisoners of war, –, , –,
, –, ; camps for (Dulags,
Stalags), –, 
Prokop, Myroslav, , – (n. )
Propaganda, , , , , ,
–; Soviet leaflet,  (n. )
Prützmann, Hans-Adolf, , , ,
, , , , 
Psychology of perpetrators, , –,
–,  (n. )
Public health, 
Race and Settlement Office (RuSHA), 
Radomyshl’, , , , 
Rasch, Otto, ; relations of with army,
; role of in Holocaust, –, ,
; critique of anti-Jewish policy by,
–, career of in SS, 
Rattenhuber, Hans, 
Ratzel, Friedrich, , 
Rayonchefs (district leaders), , , 
Razesberger, Franz, , , , –
, –
Rear Army Group Area South, , ,
, , , , –, 
Red Army, –, 
Reich Colonial League, 
Reich Commissar for Ukraine. See Koch,
Erich
Reich Commissariat Ukraine, , –
Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germandom. See Himmler,
Heinrich
Reichenau, Walter von, , –, ,
, , , 
Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern
Territories. See Rosenberg, Alfred
Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern
Territories, 
Reich Security Service (RSD), , ,

Reinicke, Hermann, 
Religion, , –
Rescue attempts, , , , , ,
, 
Resistance, –, 
Richter, Josef, , , 
Riedl, Josef, , , 
Roma, 
Roman Catholic Church, , 
Romania, , 
Roques, Karl von, , , ; and Volksdeutsche, ; memorandum on
‘‘pacification’’ measures by, –;
and anti-Jewish policies, , ; and
antipartisan warfare, 
Rosenberg, Alfred, ; colonialist ideas
of, , , ; and POWs, ; and
‘‘Jewish Question,’’ , , ; and
establishment of eastern ministry,
–, ; relations of with other
Nazi leaders, –, ; and Tolerance Edict, ; and Volksdeutsche,

Rozenberg, Michael, 
RSD. See Reich Security Service
Rundstedt, Gerd von, 
RuSHA. See Race and Settlement Office
Ruzhyn, –, , 
Index

Salmanzig, Theodor, 
Samhorodok, , , 
Sauckel, Fritz, , , 
Schacht, Hjalmar, 
Schill, Richard, 
Schmidt, Friedrich, 
Schulz, Erwin, , 
Schutzmannschaften. See Ukrainian
police
Schutzpolizei, 
Security Divisions (German army), ,
, –, , , , 
Sevast’ianov, Aleksandr, , 
Seventeenth Army, , 
Shynal’skii, Ivan, , 
Sipo-SD Aussenstelle, , , 
Sixth Army, , , –, , –
Skoropodskyi, Hetman, 
Slovakian troops, , 
Smith, Woodruff, 
Snyder, Timothy, 
Sonderkommando a, , , , ,
–, –, 
Sonderkommando b, 
Sonderkommando , 
Sonderkommando Russland, , ,
, 
Soviet partisan movement, , –,

Spector, Shmuel, , , 
Speer, Albert, 
SS Bauabschnittsleitung, 
SS-Brigades. See First SS-Brigade
SS-Viking, , 
Stalags, , , 
Stalin, Josef, , , , 
Stalingrad, 
Stalinism, , , 
Starosty, , , ,  (n. )
Steiner, Felix, 
Steinweis, Alan, , 
Sterilization, –, 

Index
Stets’ko, Iaroslav, 
Steudel, Wolfgang, , –
Strizhavka, –
Stülpnagel, Karl-Heinrich von, ,
–
Stumpp, Karl, , –
Thomas, Max, , , , , –

Tkachova, Anna, 
Todt, Fritz, 
Transnistria, , , ,  (n. )
Treks, 
Tul’chyn, 
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 
Tyriv, 
Ukraine, , ; and Hungary, , ;
and Poland, ; and Romania, , ;
Stalinism in, 
Ukrainian Autocephalous Church. See
Orthodox Church
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), 
(n. )
Ukrainian police, –, –, –
; Ordnungsdienst, , –;
Askaris, ; in Schutzmannschaften,
, , –, –, , ;
in Hilfspolizei, ; in mobile battalions, , ,  (n. ); and partisan
warfare, –, ,  (n. )
Ukrainians, , , , , ; and Nazi
invasion, –, –; in German
administration, , –, , ,
–; as prisoners of war, –;
and Holocaust, , –, ; and
sociocultural developments, ;
forced labor of, –, ; deportations of, , , ; in partisan
warfare, , . See also Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
Umanskii, Semen, 
United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, 
UPA. See Ukrainian Insurgent Army
Utopian socialists, 
Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, , –,

Vollkammer, Traugott, 
Volodars’k-Volyns’kyi, –
Vasilevichi, 
Vernichtungskrieg. See Operation Barbarossa
Village elders. See Starosty
Vinnytsia, , ; military invasion of,
; military administration in, –,
; Holocaust in, –, , , –
; camps in, , ; mass graves in,

Vlasov, Andrei, , 
Volhynian Germans, 
Volksdeutsche, , , –, ;
Soviet deportations of, –; in German administration, , , –,
, –, , ; and Holocaust,
, –; Nazi indoctrination of,
; Nazi resettlement of, , ,
; evacuation of, –; in Selbstschutz (police force), , , .
See also Hegewald
Wagner, Eduard, , 
Wannsee Conference and Protocol, ,

Wedelstädt, Helmuth von, 
Wehrmacht atrocities, –, , , 
Wehrmacht Propaganda Unit , 
Weiner, Amir, , 
Werwolf, , –, 
Wetzel, Erhard, 
Youth, , , 
Zhytomyr: prewar, , ,  (n. );
military invasion of, –; security measures in, –; camps in,
; and Holocaust, –, –,
; Volksdeutsche in, , –;
Holocaust memorial in, 
Index
